Full Details of My Attempted Entrapment For Teaching Polygraph Countermeasures

George Maschke writes "In May of this year, I was the target of an attempted entrapment, evidently in connection with material support for terrorism. Marisa Taylor of McClatchy reported briefly on this in August. I've now published a full public accounting, including the raw source of the e-mails received and the IP addresses involved. Comments from Slashdot readers more technically savvy than I are welcome."

Comments

We need a workers government

[For a Free Internet]

For a Soviet America! Build a revolutionary workers party with the program of Lenin and Trotsky!

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy life. Enjoy ainol.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

The emerging dialectic has left Leninist, Trotskyist, Stalinist, and Maoist revolution on the ash heap of history. Only Democratic Capitalism has delivered on the promises of the communist party which has seen its own promises go unfulfilled and proven to be empty for a century! Throw off your chains of thought, brother, and join us in the present! Down with Lenin! Down with Trotsky! Down with Stalin! Down with Mao! Long live free enterprise! Long live opportunity! And yes, long live the true unions for workers free from communism!

Re:We need a workers government

[Oligonicella]

Huh.... Uh, no.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

While adopting Communism might not be the best idea, there are many many things we can learn from the ideologies that are as relevant as ever. Of course rethuglicans and conservatards will whine but with any luck their days are numbered and stuck in the 20th century

Re:We need a workers government

[khallow]

there are many many things we can learn from the ideologies that are as relevant as ever

Such as killing a hundred million people should be bad?

Of course rethuglicans and conservatards will whine but with any luck their days are numbered and stuck in the 20th century

Who's the conservative? The person trying to create an adventurous 21th century economic system or the person still fighting 19th century problems that went away a century ago?

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

there are many many things we can learn from the ideologies that are as relevant as ever

Such as killing a hundred million people should be bad?

Killing hundred million people was not a part of ideologies. You should learn to distinguish between interfaces and implementations.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

"adventurous 21th century economic system"

What a scummy way to say "fuck minorities and the poor"

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are in the Bay Area (most major metro areas have a chapter though) these folks are a great source for literature and assistance. They helped out A LOT in our anti-2nd amendment march in Vallejo during the Zimmerman trial this past summer.

Re:We need a workers government

[0123456]

Killing hundred million people was not a part of ideologies. You should learn to distinguish between interfaces and implementations.

How do you plan to elminate private property without murdering the millions who want to keep theirs?

Communism can only be imposed by force and mass murder, because it's so completely incompatible with human nature.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

The millions of supposed murders were only for those who refused to be re-educated.

Re:We need a workers government

[radiumsoup]

so far, there have been no implementations of the Communist ideology *without* suppression of free people to the extreme of mass murdering the dissenters.

Re:We need a workers government

[Bob_Who]

Communism can only be imposed by force and mass murder, because it's so completely incompatible with human nature.

People are incompatible with human nature.

Oh shit! We're all gonna die!

ALL of us, even them!

Now what should we do ?

(a) Draw straws and see who dies first?
(b) Read Lord of the Flies?
(c) Plan your retirement?
(d) Kill mutants?
(e) Burma Shave

Re:We need a workers government

[khallow]

You should learn to distinguish between interfaces and implementations.

Don't worry, I have. I just have copious evidence that Communism is an interface that should never be implemented at the national or global level.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

"suppression of free people to the extreme of mass murdering the dissenters."

You mean killing the shit heaps that parrot shit about the individual and fuck everybody that isn't me? Ya, real loss there

Re:We need a workers government

[Opportunist]

Get with the times. Don't you know that if you're poor it's your own damn fault? And if you don't have bread, why not eat cake?

Re:We need a workers government

[Bob_Who]

"adventurous 21th century economic system"

What a scummy way to say "fuck minorities and the poor"

Or as H.S.Thompson would paraphrase Nixon in 'Where the Buffalo Roam': "The doomed....I hate the doomed"

But I agree with you.

Its sink or swim for ALL of us on this ship of fools. If anyone thinks that other people deserve to be tossed off of the boat into the abyss, they are free to volunteer themselves to that cause. As for the rest of us, lets all coexist as golden rulers. And that starts with helping each other. Even the doomed. Even Nixon.

Re:We need a workers government

[PFactor]

Respectfully, that's not an argument; it's a rant with a basis in reducto ad absurdem. I'm not saying I disagree with you (or even that I agree). I'm pointing out that you did not refute a single point with anything approaching valid logic.

Re:We need a workers government

[khallow]

Its sink or swim for ALL of us on this ship of fools.

Except of course, for those who aren't on the ship in the first place. For example, every implementation of Communism created a class of elites who didn't share in the problems they created for the rest of society.

Ultimately, Communism is another variation of the idea of stealing from the rich to give to the poor. But once you put such a thug in power, there's nothing holding them to that promise.

As to my "adventurous economic systems", I think they've worked out pretty well at helping the poor as well as everyone else in society.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

You should learn to distinguish between interfaces and implementations.

Also paranoid psychotic dictators.

Re:We need a workers government

[Bob_Who]

Actually I am for anything that works. Anything goes as long as its not tossing folks off of the boat or enslaving the crew. Capitalism seems to work as well as anything else, when implemented fairly. Only people can make it work or make it fail, whatever the ideology.

Re:We need a workers government

[Bob_Who]

Bingo.

Re:We need a workers government

[Sique]

Luckily the U.S. stopped the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia and South America by installing capitalist dictatorships, which didn't need any of those forces and mass murderings.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

so far, there have been no implementations of the Communist ideology *without* suppression of free people to the extreme of mass murdering the dissenters.

This does not prove anything. You can't use a counterexample to prove that an existence theorem is wrong.

Re:We need a workers government

[Pikoro]

So what you're saying, is that people are the problem.

Re:We need a workers government

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I don't think they said fuck everybody who isn't me, rather they want more freedom and flexibility in their lives instead of a nanny state. Communism is sort of the ultimate nanny state. It doesn't aim to be that way, but that is how it always ends up. And if everybody doesn't fall in line, it doesn't work either, so you sort of have to deprive them of their heads.

Re:We need a workers government

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Or even a local one. Look at what happened to the Icarians in Nauvoo, IL. Basically they had an entire town handed to them on a silver platter, and everything started out nicely. But a lack of motivation caused a steadily declining economy until they had to do the same thing Russia later did: Force people to work.

Re:We need a workers government

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Except under capitalism minorities and the poor are more empowered than ever.

In America even the poor have cell phones and cars. What communist country can say the same thing? Access to food is so trivial here, yet in those places they'd be lucky if they have more than one meal in a given day.

Re:We need a workers government

[femtobyte]

Granted, there haven't been any examples of far-right countries that have done spectacularly better on that front, either. The US has the world's highest incarceration rate; we've become quite good at allowing dissent "in theory" while rounding up dissenters from the system on globally unprecedented scales, to create a permanent gulag class (often used as forced labor for the profits of the private prison industry).

It's an interesting dichotomy: the US has some of the world's best free speech protections "in theory," but the stranglehold of megacorporate interests over, e.g., all widespread media outlets assures that speech representing the interests of the working class is entirely lacking in the "public discourse" of the nation. When people try to speak more effectively proportional to their numbers rather than their wealth, e.g. Occupy protests, they are gassed and beaten and rounded up into jails (typically for the maximum time they can be held for "processing" without charges), and the corporate media does its job of letting multimillionaire white males explain to us why those dirty hippies deserved what they got.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure if you found a true comunist society, and the US wanted to change them into a capitalist society many people would be quite unhappy. I'm positive many many would die. (millions if the country is big enough).

People dont like change, Film at 11.

Re:We need a workers government

[Fjandr]

You actually believe most of those murders were those who thought only of themselves? They murdered people simply for having possessions from the "wrong" culture.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

In Cuba, even the poor have access to free medical care good enough to ensure that average life expectancy about equal to the longevity of people in the USA. And infant mortality is slightly lower than in the US. Not everyone has a car --- it's a small poor country --- but with ride sharing and buses it's possible to get around. I would gladly trade my cell phone for that.

Re:We need a workers government

[BlueStrat]

Granted, there haven't been any examples of far-right countries that have done spectacularly better on that front, either.

See, that's the problem with the logic of this whole thread. You're failing to look at the larger picture.

Capitalism, fascism, communism, socialism etc etc...

None of it is really relevant.

What *is* relevant is what place on the range scale between Anarchy and Tyranny, or alternately, between Authoritarian and Libertarian (not the US political party) a society, ideology, government, or nation occupies. It also can be described as the struggle between those who believe men cannot govern themselves by mutual consent, and therefor need a central-planning & control system to control everything and everyone, and those who do believe men can govern themselves without a king, dictator, or ruling class/party of elites.

Consequently, the many ideological/political systems which require central planning & control start out already a good ways along the above-described scale towards the "Tyranny" or Authoritarian" side. This is not good from an individual citizen's standpoint, as government grows it's power by taking it from the citizens This has historically been accomplished most often by the simple expedient of killing/starving those individuals and groups who resist and/or are "inconvenient" for some reason, and some groups are simply used to direct hatred and anger against and away from government.

Strat

Re:We need a workers government

[wwalker]

Also, sheep generally have trivial access to abundant food and cows even have computerized milking machines, with laser range-finders and all sorts of entertaining, stress-reducing and comforting gadgets. And your point is?

Re:We need a workers government

[sjames]

I guess you didn't realize that parents on food stamps often have to skip meals so their kids can eat. And that we just reduced benefits for recipients again.

Oddly enough, cellphones and cars are easier to get than food for the poor.

Re:We need a workers government

[omfgnosis]

Leaving aside the numerous ways radical political change can be achieved for a second... communism is incompatible with human nature? You mean, the classless and stateless arrangement that characterized the vast majority of human history? Not to sugar-coat "primitive communism", which certainly had plenty of ills that stood to be cured, but you couldn't be further from the mark. States—feudal and then merchant-capitalist and then capitalist—have continually been imposed. There's a reason that all of these "advancements" have been resisted everywhere they're evangelized at the end of a weapon.

Now, could communism be achieved without force and mass murder? (It's best to note that force is not necessarily the same thing as mass murder.) Certainly, why not? Scarcely any of the blood shed carving out the social democratic features of the primarily wealthy countries has been on the hands of the people seeking those features. There's no reason to believe the same course can't be followed indefinitely. While this course has certainly suffered setbacks, the overwhelming majority of people favor it. It's only the vast accumulation of power in the hands of a tiny elite that is holding it back, and now the only real weapon available to them is the erosion of democracy (now who's engaged in force?).

Be that as it may, most of the history of radical change is characterized by violence. If communism were to be achieved by force, the worst other revolutions could claim is that it failed to rise above their own moral character specifically in terms of means.

I don't want you to take this to mean that I think a violent communist revolution is desirable or even excusable (I'm not even exactly an advocate of communism, full disclosure). But for fuck's sake, let's at least be honest—about human history, about "human nature", and about the long storied history of political upheaval.

Re:We need a workers government

[TFAFalcon]

You pass a law saying that all property now belongs to the state. If they resist the law violently then killing them isn't murder. And if they don't resist then there is no need to kill them.

Communism can be imposed without force, as long as the (currently) rich are as law abiding as they want the poor to be.

Re:We need a workers government

[omfgnosis]

In the richest country in the world, people have cheap gadgets and are slaves to the transportation they inevitably need to get to work? That's empowerment? Say it ain't so.

Also, I wouldn't call corner stores with fritos and gummy worms access to food.

Re:We need a workers government

[omfgnosis]

LOL the folks who wrote in support of tin pot dictators around the world (so long as they weren't US-backed)? No thanks.

Re:We need a workers government

[dunkelfalke]

Well, that is the thing, the majority of the people in Russia back then was free in name only. The law framework for abolishing serfdom (and a very unfair one as it is) was established in 1861, but the serfdom itself continued in different parts of Russia for up to 20 years later, and even in the parts of Russia where serfdom was actually abolished, the Emancipation Reform of 1861 basically converted serfdom to peonage, not dissimilar to the Black Codes in the past Civil War United States, with the difference that the former serfs were the majority of the population.

Re:We need a workers government

[TBBle]

Viet Nam has a cell phone penetration level of 150%, and there's almost 1 motor scooter for every two people. Food is incredibly cheap here too.

Then again, the poverty rate in Viet Nam is only 12%, compared to 16% in the USA, so it might be an unfair comparison.

Re:We need a workers government

[dywolf]

Communism can only be imposed by force and mass murder, because it's so completely incompatible with human nature.

That is not even close to factual.

Re:We need a workers government

[Bob_Who]

Communism can only be imposed by force and mass murder, because it's so completely incompatible with human nature.

That is not even close to factual.

I agree.

I was actually quoting the statement from further up the thread, but I lost the 'quote' tag.
Now I'm on the blacklist because of a typo.
I might as well learn to speak Russian.

Re:We need a workers government

[Bob_Who]

Yeah. Its fairly obtuse information, nevertheless, its often overlooked. Nothing is ideal, or even close, but how we all deal with one another is more important than any particular set of rules. Our principles must apply to our choices. We uphold values - not doctrine, else we miss the point. A Bible, a Constitution, or a Policy is only as good or effective as the people who engage in it. Our values can be reflected in coping with any particular system. A golden age can emerge from anywhere, if we just cooperate.

Re:We need a workers government

[Shadowmist]

You pass a law saying that all property now belongs to the state. If they resist the law violently then killing them isn't murder. And if they don't resist then there is no need to kill them.

Communism can be imposed without force, as long as the (currently) rich are as law abiding as they want the poor to be.

Such a system did exist. It was called Feudalism only the state was the King, who parceled out land to his vassals who in turn employed serfs to feed him, his knights and to tithe to his overlords. But technically it was the King who awarded land and who could take it back by decree. That system was changed in a process that involved a lot of legislation with frequent helpings of violence. (As it did when one King would decide that some of the land parcels owned by another king would look a lot better in HIS possession.) It's tied up with the whole notion of ownership. After all you can say that you "own" a piece of property. But unless you're the only man in the world, there will come a question of who or what invests you with that "right" of ownership. No matter what kind of society you envision, that right will come from a greater whole and there will be expectations demanded as the price of that right, in the form of laws and taxes.

Re:We need a workers government

[Shadowmist]

Its sink or swim for ALL of us on this ship of fools.

Except of course, for those who aren't on the ship in the first place. For example, every implementation of Communism created a class of elites who didn't share in the problems they created for the rest of society. .

You mean like the one percenters who don't suffer when they close a factory in Michigan and ship those jobs off to the Far East? They don't exactly suffer when the economy goes into the toilet for the rest of the country. The fact is while the last ten years may have been shit for the rest of society, for them those were the best years they've had since the Gilded Age.``

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation needed in regards to abuse of Occupy?

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

Reductio ad absurdum IS a kind of argument, and it IS valid logic.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is a far-left country. Not far-right.

Re:We need a workers government

[khallow]

You mean like the one percenters who don't suffer when they close a factory in Michigan and ship those jobs off to the Far East?

Or the 99 percenters in the Far East who get better jobs because that factory moved. Yes, I mean those sorts of people.

The fact is while the last ten years may have been shit for the rest of society, for them those were the best years they've had since the Gilded Age.

I guess someone has to do something about those 19th century problems. That's what we have conservatives for.

Re:We need a workers government

[femtobyte]

I agree with this to a large extent; and why, for functioning examples of Communist-style societies, I'd point to Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalism during the run-up to the Spanish civil war, who were typically at odds with Communist leaders hoping for the establishment of a more centralized "Worker's State."

I wouldn't completely erase the Capitalist/Fascist/Communist/etc. distinctions as being irrelevant compared to the anarchist-authoritarian dimension, for the reason that Capitalism is *always* authoritarian. The US right wing tries to construct a "populist-sounding" Capitalism in "right Libertarian" trends, by simply ignoring that hierarchies of accumulated wealth are no less insidious than any other hierarchies of accumulated power. By establishing a false dichotomy between "free markets" and "oppressive governments" as societal power structures oppressing the many for the benefit of the few (where the former can dogmatically do no bad, and the latter takes blame for every human evil), the right wing confuses freedom for money (and the rich) with freedom for humankind. Genuine anarchist alternatives are thus constantly undermined by Koch-brothers-style feudalism under the guise of "individual liberty" (as much as you've got money to buy).

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

so far, there have been no implementations of the Communist ideology *without* suppression of free people to the extreme of mass murdering the dissenters.

Same can be said of any totalitarian capitalist regime (eg, U.S. genocidal mass murder of native Americans)

Re:We need a workers government

[BlueStrat]

I wouldn't completely erase the Capitalist/Fascist/Communist/etc. distinctions as being irrelevant compared to the anarchist-authoritarian dimension, for the reason that Capitalism is *always* authoritarian.

I disagree strongly. Capitalism works because all it does is acknowledge what occurs naturally...people trade with each other. Whether it is in the form of barter among primitive tribal peoples or some type of modern monetary/financial system or a black market under non-capitalistic regimes, humans naturally will engage in capitalism without the use of coercive force.

The same is not true of other systems. It is not natural for people to sacrifice the fruits of their labor to others, and in particular, definitely not natural to be compelled under threat of force to sacrifice so much that it negatively impacts them and their families in major ways, as is the case with the central planning and control models like communism, socialism, fascism, etc. It is why those models have historically failed and resulted in horrific suffering among many millions.

Capitalism works by the simple fact that individual people will engage in capitalism with each other naturally on their own without the threat of force. This is rarely true of socialism, communism, fascism, etc, which are typically implemented on national scales by force. Only among small, relatively intimate groups do things like socialism and communism actually work, and are engaged in on a voluntary basis among the individuals.

Strat

Re:We need a workers government

[femtobyte]

People do "naturally" trade, but allowing *accumulated wealth* (without limits) to be the single, ultimate deciding factor in society's distribution of resources is the unique point of Capitalism (over varied pre-capitalist and non-capitalist societal mechanisms that still contain elements of trade and private property). Capitalism makes it a possibility, even a "moral prerogative," to permit one person to wield a million times the influence over how decisions are made in society (via markets) than another --- this is the ultimate in authoritarianism. More democratic, decentralized, and egalitarian societal forms do not preclude trade; but they do require alternate arrangements from the "golden rule" of "he who has the gold, rules." Unregulated markets are inherently unstable towards accumulation, monopolization, and ultimately the re-establishment of an elite ruling class that right-Libertarians are nominally seeking to escape.

Re:We need a workers government

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Counterexample.
Currently there are 270 implementations of the communist ideology without suppression of free people to the extreme of mass murdering the dissenters. In Israel alone.

Re:We need a workers government

[Yakasha]

Except under capitalism minorities and the poor are more empowered than ever.

Entertainment is not empowerment. If you think that you and I combined have the same power and influence on our government as the Koch brothers... I think you're insane.

In America even the poor have cell phones and cars. What communist country can say the same thing? Access to food is so trivial here, yet in those places they'd be lucky if they have more than one meal in a given day.

Correlation, not causation. The United States has been in a unique position of being started with capitalism in a land with insanely abundant natural resources that naturally distributed themselves. Of course as those natural resources were tapped and depleted, wealth concentration started happening. The same wealth concentration that inspired the Communist revolutions in Russia. Our boom/bust cycles are getting more frequent and severe, the poor are getting poorer, the rich richer. The fact that cheap cell phones are the new rotten turnip changes nothing. Especially with global warming speeding up the depletion of livable territory and scarcity of food, it is only a matter of time before the population (US included) is too large to support capitalism.

When we have 50%, 60%, or 90% unemployment, who will be supporting our capitalist economy?

Perhaps not Communism specifically, but some kind of socialism is the only workable system long term. Of course even that will fail unless population controls are put in place or humans leave earth. I see our current system failing soon, probably in my lifetime, and probably quite violently. Even technology that assists with "solving" food & living space issues exacerbates unemployment. Democracy may survive, but capitalism can't.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism works because all it does is acknowledge what occurs naturally...people trade with each other.

False. Capitalism requires at minimum an authority on property ownership.

From the head of the family, to the leader of a tribe, to local government, capitalism relies on somebody to lay the ground runs in which everybody else operates.

How much or how little ground rules there are depends on how libertarian you are, but all but the most extreme libertarians believe there would need to be some minimal level of government to run things.

It is not natural for people to sacrifice the fruits of their labor to others

No, it's very natural for people to sacrifice themselves for others or the collective. You mentioned it yourself: the family ("so much that it negatively impacts them and their families in major ways") in the small scale.

It's no coincidence the term Big Brother became popular, creating the image that the state wants to become your family authority figure which you can't choose out of.

In the small scale, people do not behave as capitalists. In that regard capitalism goes against human nature too.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

In communist China, most folks have cell phones, and their cellular network is better than ours in the US. Been there, seen it.

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it's a pretty solid statement with strong historical evidence to back it up. What I'm not sure about, is what it is you're trying to say. You state you neither agree nor disagree, so what exactly is the purpose of your post? I'm guessing some form of public intellectual masturbation.

Re:We need a workers government

[BlueStrat]

People do "naturally" trade, but allowing *accumulated wealth* (without limits) to be the single, ultimate deciding factor in society's distribution of resources is the unique point of Capitalism (over varied pre-capitalist and non-capitalist societal mechanisms that still contain elements of trade and private property).

A non-corrupt, well-functioning government which enforced laws & regulations equally mitigates that, and a smaller government with fewer people with fewer/lesser powers available to be suborned making it less attractive/profitable to suborn contributes greatly.

More democratic, decentralized, and egalitarian societal forms do not preclude trade; but they do require alternate arrangements from the "golden rule" of "he who has the gold, rules." Unregulated markets are inherently unstable towards accumulation, monopolization, and ultimately the re-establishment of an elite ruling class that right-Libertarians are nominally seeking to escape.

I don't know of anyone in their right mind seriously suggesting totally eliminating all regulations. That's a false dichotomy. Less does not equal none. There has never been pure capitalism in the US, nor anything approaching an unregulated market in the US since the early 20th century.

I do believe that as much governing as possible be done as locally as possible, and that those in government should only be given barely enough wealth and power to accomplish their duties.

That decentralized society you refer to is exactly what I described and what the authors of the US Constitution tried to design, and did a pretty good job until politicians decided to "improve" on it with laws designed to bypass Constitutional restrictions on government powers and bypass the need for public consent for adding an Amendment. Or, in many if not most cases, just plain.ignoring the Constitution and destroying anyone who protests.

Government size and power has grown immensely, especially over the last ~80 years, yet we see almost daily the rising numbers of ever-more blatant and over-the-top occurrences of both government and private sector corruption and lawless actions with little consequences for the guilty, often even rewarded in the end after any negative PR blows over. How is adding more laws or regulations going to help when those who break existing laws are not held to account?

I think you might have the misconception (I could be wrong) that accumulated individual wealth is simply locked away somewhere in some combination of paper and actual monetary vaults and does nothing to benefit society. To the contrary, that wealth sitting in financial institutions & banks provides capital to lend to individuals for homes/cars/etc and to small businesses.

It in fact expands the amount and scope of resources available to all because of the capital it makes available to invest to increase supply and availability while also bringing costs down and encouraging efficiency of utilization, as that typically brings the highest returns and market advantages.

Also, the accumulated wealth of those who worked, sacrificed, invested, and possibly started a business and became successful does not take that wealth from others. Wealth is fungible and can be created by anyone if they aren't overly-restricted in their freedom to do so by unreasonably-burdensome laws, taxes, or regulations.

Capitalism is not perfect. Far from it. But, mangling the Churchill "democracy" quote; "Capitalism is the worst form of society, except all the others that have been tried."

Strat

Re:We need a workers government

[Anonymous Coward]

corporations lose everything

no one loses their houses.

easy, solved it for you.

capatch = embassy

Re:We need a workers government

[femtobyte]

That decentralized society you refer to is exactly what I described and what the authors of the US Constitution tried to design

No, the authors of the Constitution designed a society specifically set up to place wealthy, white, male landowners in exclusive control of society. Slavery was built into the system from the start. Concepts like ordinary citizens being able to vote for their national legislators were specifically circumvented. It has taken hundreds of years to reverse (and still, incompletely) the structural inequalities and oppressions built into the Constitutional system. Yes, the Constitution contained some good ideas; it's not pure evil, and parts are salvageable. But, neither is it a blueprint for a free and equal society, though it has frequently been mythologized as such.

Re:We need a workers government

[jwhitener]

I was curious about just how easy it was to get food in the US.

20.2% of US households are food insecure. (breakdown is 5.7% don't have enough to eat or serious disruptions in food supply often, and the remaining 14.5% basically can only afford very poor food low in dietary value).

I don't know how these current numbers compare with the current numbers in communist countries, but they sure seem way higher than I expect from a nation as wealthy as the US.

Citations:

http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hunger-and-poverty-statistics.aspx#_edn12

Insecure definitions:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/definitions-of-food-security.aspx#.Unk6FxDOSZk
Low food security (old label=Food insecurity without hunger): reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake.
Very low food security (old label=Food insecurity with hunger): Reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.

Re:We need a workers government

[BlueStrat]

No, the authors of the Constitution designed a society specifically set up to place wealthy, white, male landowners in exclusive control of society. Slavery was built into the system from the start.

No, they designed a distributed government of limited powers. History and documents and letters from the founders show that the founders wanted to eliminate slavery when the Constitution was written, but they would have lost the southern states and consequently the revolutionary war against the British if they did not ignore the issue at that time.

"Great as the evil of slavery is, a dismemberment of the union would be worse." - James Madison

"There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery." - George Washington

"Every measure of prudence therefore ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States. I have, throughout my whole life, held that the practice of slavery is an abhorrence." - John Adams

There are many more.

As to the "3/5ths" issue, it was only for purposes of the census that slaves were counted as 3/5ths of a person so that the slave-owning states did not acquire an unfair advantage in the number of their representatives in Congress and block any effort to end slavery.

Slavery in the American colonies was started by a black man, Anthony Johnson, who owned a tobacco farm, not a white man. Anthony Johnson, a black, fought in the courts to become the first slave owner in the US. The first black US Senator was Hiram Revels in 1870. The army was non-segregated up until President Woodrow Wilson (D) segregated it.

Concepts like ordinary citizens being able to vote for their national legislators were specifically circumvented.

Voting was at first limited to land owners as a practical matter, as they were the only ones likely to be educated enough to be literate and comprehend what they voted upon, and would be the ones paying the taxes to fund the results. This changed after literacy rates improved.

If you meant the time prior to the 17th Amendment changing US Senate seats from State legislature-elected positions to citizen-elected positions, I believe that was wrong and that Amendment should be changed back to Senate seats being elected by State legislatures, as it has taken too much power away from the States and resulted in a nearly omnipotent Federal government.

Yes, the Constitution contained some good ideas; it's not pure evil, and parts are salvageable. But, neither is it a blueprint for a free and equal society, though it has frequently been mythologized as such.

The US Constitution has resulted in the most free & equal society ever to exist as a nation. Nothing is ever perfect or can ever be perfect that is made by man. Don't allow perfect to be the enemy of good.

Go read some history from first sources, not someone else's interpretations. Read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers if you want to know what the founders intended regarding the Constitution in their own words. As you demonstrate with your reply, much of that history has been re-written or suppressed.

Strat

Re:We need a workers government

[femtobyte]

Your post above is a perfect example of why I have yet to see any capitalist with the least bit of credibility as an anti-authoritarian. Your entire defense of the Constitution is based on hard-line authoritarian propaganda: that the common (wo)man is too stupid and ignorant to be tasked with the organization of society, thus they must rely on the superior class of wealthy men to rule over them. No actual anti-authoritarian could say what you just did with a straight face.

Yes, you can find isolated quotes from some of the Founding Fathers opposing slavery. Note, however, that they were too small a portion of the whole to push through such an agenda --- the documents produced don't reflect some mythical purity of free spirit, but a severe compromise with sick ideologies. Also, the evidence of history indicates that, besides a few quips, freedom and equality of the majority of humankind (including blacks and women) never rose high enough on the agenda of these "great leaders" to merit further action. Influential elder statesmen like President Washington could get a lot done when they wanted --- where were Washington's, or Adams', follow-up actions to put a "plan adopted for the abolition of slavery" into action, besides a few idle words as a low priority? If these men were so lacking in leadership ability to be unable to advance substantial later reforms, why do you think they somehow managed to keep the constitution free of ulterior influences?

Yes, a few black senators were elected shortly after the Civil War, when Southern "state's rights" were severely curtailed at Union gunpoint to break existing political factions and give blacks a brief period of political influence during the reconstruction era. That era quickly faded away, as the South was restored its political autonomy to enter the era of de-jure segregation that rapidly eliminated blacks from political representation for over half a century to follow. Your presumption that "state's rights" are helpful to human liberty is flatly contradicted by history. Human rights are helpful; "state's rights," that mean allowing the local wealthy power elite to rule with brutal impunity, have been nothing but disastrous; restoring "state's rights" is still the rallying cry of neo-confederate racist activists today.

Your assertion that the US under the Constitution has been "the most free & equal society ever to exist as a nation" generally lacks support from the facts. The nation's early development was marked by the systematic mass genocide of the native population. In intervening years, the US has pretty much never been a world leader in human rights, on the most basic issues. We were slow to abolish slavery, slow to allow women's suffrage, slow to remove explicitly racist laws, etc., compared to other developed countries. Foreign policy has generally involved supporting heinous brutal dictators and their death squads (trained in the good ol' USA). Today, the US is marked by rather high inequality and low social mobility compared to other first-world nations. The US isn't the worst place on Earth, but what's your evidence that it's anywhere near "the most free & equal society ever to exist as a nation"?

I've read history. You've obviously only read propaganda, that involves willfully ignoring what actually *happened* in history, in favor of a few snappy quotes that cast mythologized heroes in the best light.

Re:We need a workers government

[BlueStrat]

I'm truly sorry that you value your ideological world-view over facts.

I hope your awakening is not tragic in nature, when it comes.

Good luck

Strat

Re:We need a workers government

[femtobyte]

What facts? More precisely, what facts *taken in meaningful context* rather than isolated blurbs re-assembled into a narrative contrary to history?

Your reference to Hiram Revels' election in 1870 is a perfect demonstration of your uselessly shallow "knowledge" of history. From the context in which you dropped that snippet, you presumably intended demonstrate that race issues in the US were nearly "resolved" in 1870, and everything's been fine since then. In the same post, you glowingly talk about "state's rights." But, when you include the tiniest bit of context --- that Revels was able to be elected in 1870 because of the Freedman's Bureau, a military presence guarding polling places to assure voting access for blacks (who held majorities in some areas) --- that "fact" you dropped with zero context to support your fictitious view of "state's rights" and racial equality in the US takes on an entirely different significance. After the reconstruction era ended --- the moment armed federal troops were recalled from the Southern states, and the KKK and fellow "state's rights" fans were given control over access to the ballot box, how many Southern black senators were elected? For the next century black majorities were entirely disenfranchised in an era of brutal repression. That's putting a fact in historical context.

Don't lecture me about facts and ideology until you've provided some facts not hopelessly detached from meaning and context, and re-invented in a purely ideological manner to fit into your ahistorical mythology.

Re:We need a workers government

[radiumsoup]

They rely on outside organizations to purchase the results of their efforts. What you're citing as a counterexample is simply a loosely formed variation of a corporation.

Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[DavidClarkeHR]

Want to stay safe? Don't learn ANYTHING that the government doesn't explicitly approve.

If you're living in the 40s, that means avoid learning about integration.
In the 90s? avoid learning about marriage equality.
Living in 2013? Don't learn about avoiding government interrogation.
Living in 2015? Don't even THINK about avoiding surveillance.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

We would never have had PGP or encryption research outside government labs if everyone followed such rules.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Lisias]

We would never have had PGP or encryption research outside government labs if everyone followed such rules.

The way I see it, no one would be using encryption nowadays if Obama managed to be president in the nineties.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[AliasMarlowe]

The way I see it, no one would be using encryption nowadays if Obama managed to be president in the nineties.

Not before 1997, according to the age rules in the constitution. Since Obama was born in August 1961, this limits his eligibility for presidency to August 1996 onwards, which effectively means January 1997 onwards due to the schedule of presidencies in the US.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[PvtVoid]

We would never have had PGP or encryption research outside government labs if everyone followed such rules.

The way I see it, no one would be using encryption nowadays if Obama managed to be president in the nineties.

Were you around in the nineties? That was when Clinton used CALEA to force telecoms to build the exact infrastructure that was exploited after 9/11 by Bush, and later Obama. That was when Clinton pushed the ultimately doomed "Clipper Chip", with all other strong encryption to be criminalized. Turns out, something as ham-handed as Clipper turned out to be un-necessary, since the NSA was just able to (apparently) subvert certification authorities and cripple hardware-based random number generators.

If Clinton had allowed a secure digital infrastructure to be built in the first place, none of the current shenanigans would have been possible, or at least would have been way harder.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[fred911]

I doubt Phil Zimmerman cared about the political environment.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Marriage equality? What the heck does that even mean?

Can siblings marry now? What about people who are already married? Children?

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

God, you young idiots are so blinded by this cult of the Enlightenment.

No on in the 1990s had a fucking clue what marriage equality was. No one discussed it seriously until this recession began 5 years ago, so that idiots like yourself would think it's more important to worry about some queers sodomizing each other in the ass than the wholesale collapse of our economy.

Madness.

FYI: it's conclusively proven that homosexuality is caused by a disease. Numerous studies have proven that homophobia is genetic in origin, and that homosexuality is not. The genetic origin of homophobia would not have evolved had it provided a survival advantage.

This is further supported by the fact young people are the most afraid of homosexuals, likely due to the fact they are the most susceptible to the disease. You will find very few examples of children NOT afraid of homosexuals anywhere in the world. The same is true for spiders, snakes, and similar creatures.

It is hypothesized that this disease operates in a manner similar to toxoplasmosis. Instead of making mice seek out cats, or crazy cat ladies, it makes men have a pathological desire to sodomize other young men due to the excellent disease transmission rate of anal sex given the fragile nature of the flesh that is violently ripped open.

Now, your little crusader of equality heart is probably horrified by this reality. Well, you're going to be even more horrified with what is going to happen once word of this gets out in the world. Nice, stupid white people like yourself will never be a threat to anyone. However, Africans, Arabs, and every other people of the world is going to slaughter these people without remorse and in huge numbers. So, before you think about expressing your rage towards this post, why don't you think carefully how you can deal with this reality.

In time, a vaccine will be developed. As with toxoplasmosis, the neurological changes that cause the deviant behavior are likely permanent, so this is the only real hope.

I'd say we have a few years until the actual germ is identified, and probably 10 more years until a vaccine is found. So, homosexuality will be largely eradicated in the not so distant future. The only thing you should be thinking about is how to have this occur as peacefully as possible.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Entropius]

Can siblings marry now?

Incest is unethical because of the risk of inbreeding; a marriage between siblings with no biological children hurts nobody.

What about people who are already married?

Why not? Brazil ruled that a triad had a constitutional right to marry.

Children?

They aren't able to form binding contracts.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're living in the 40s, that means avoid learning about integration.

Sorry, I don't want to be integrated.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

CALEA (1994) was the bargain for foregoing the Clipper Chip (1993).

That's no defense of CALEA. But it's worthwhile to get the history correct, because the politicians and officials who compromised in 1994 are going to want to know what they're going to get if you discard CALEA. Of course, it's unlikely CALEA is going anywhere.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you have every right to your opinion. But I think you should take into account that no man can be a specialist in every subject and the day of every leader of any country is packed full to the point where hundreds of calls or emails will go unanswered even though they work 16 hours every day. So they have to rely on advisors in subjects they are not too familiar with to form their opinion.
Obama may have poor judgement when it comes to going with his own opinion or rather following his advisors (who as sure as hell will make him feel like he doesn't know shit and will lobby for whatever the fuck they believe in or they are payed to believe in).
But I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have enabled him or his advisors to stop openssl, truecrypt, or anything else. AFAIK exporting encryption technology to outside the US for the longest time was banned and I'm fairly certain the only reason that ban was lifted was because it became obsolete with leaps in what the NSA could accomplish.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

2/10, far too obvious.

Go back to GameFAQs, or maybe Digg if you're feeling confident. You're years away from being ready to troll here.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

However, your disappointment in Obama I can fully understand. Especially as a german I feel let down. I understand he has tough decisions but especially since he can't get re-elected he could give guantanamo back to cuba, strategic advantages for future presidents be damned. public opinion be damned.
nobody ever gave a damn about spying. everybody spies, that's pretty much consensus, the general american public doesn't feel it's wrong at all that the US (along with canada, etc) spies on virtually everyone. it's the best thing for the US obviously.
What I expected from Obama was a grand gesture that the US won't be the dominant force in the 21th century and wants to play fair with everyone. And for me that menas most of all economically and judicially. It means working together to end the reign of the financial sector over the production sector. It means ending land grabbing and being responsible for the quality of life of people who live in the vicinity of land owned by corporations.
I say that also as a german who has seen what Krupp does to the quality of life of many people without so much as paying a single cent for cancer treatment, much less lowering their exhaust of dangerous chemicals in those regions too poor and weak to defend themselves.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Jane Q. Public]

"Were you around in the nineties? That was when Clinton used CALEA to force telecoms to build the exact infrastructure that was exploited after 9/11 by Bush, and later Obama."

The lesson is clear: even if the current administration pushes something through while promising not to abuse it, that has absolutely no bearing on whether someone else will, later.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

also just in case that wasn't clear: economic consequences be damned. Take it from the rich, give it to the poor. Fuck the beneficiairs of the current system all the way to poor peoples hell. Limit the boni of managers, don't let companies and people go virtually tax free, collect that money and invest it into large scale infrastructures like solar energy plants, high speed railroads and electric cars for metropolitans.
the true leeches to society aren't the people who work two jobs and still can't afford rent. the leeches are the ones who have a short stay with their private jets.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The way I see it, no one would be using encryption nowadays if Obama managed to be president in the nineties.

Not before 1997, according to the age rules in the constitution. Since Obama was born in August 1961, this limits his eligibility for presidency to August 1996 onwards, which effectively means January 1997 onwards due to the schedule of presidencies in the US.

I know I'm going to some sort of hell for trolls for posting this, but... couldn't he have just faked up his birth certificate with an earlier date on it?

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Bob_Who]

You must have been paying attention. Don't confuse the argument with facts. Its just not fair.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you sound like one of those politicians who, upon taking the oath of office, puts both hands on the Constitution and swears to uphold the Bible.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. A google search led me to this: http://www.vdare.com/articles/gay-gene-or-gay-germ

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Greyfox]

So two male or female siblings could get gay-married and that'd be OK?

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

CALEA (1994) was the bargain for foregoing the Clipper Chip (1993).

That's no defense of CALEA. But it's worthwhile to get the history correct, because the politicians and officials who compromised in 1994 are going to want to know what they're going to get if you discard CALEA. Of course, it's unlikely CALEA is going anywhere.

I've got no problem with CALEA.
It's pretty basic and simple- if the local cops want to be able to tap a phone call real-time, they have to purchase a PRI (or other dedicated voice circuit) which will mirror the phone calls from the local telco over to their local office. If they want to actually get a tap, they have to submit a hardcopy court order to the telco showing a specific period they wish to eavesdrop, and the telco will mirror calls to them just for that number. The cops don't control what gets tapped or when it starts and ends.
It's targeted and specific, they need a standard warrant, there are no secret courts, no mass data scooping, and telco's only have to setup the CALEA system if the local LE agencies request it. It's really not much different than sending a guy out with a lineman's suit to climb a pole or enter a junction box to manually tap the line... just quicker and far less expensive.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[ohnocitizen]

What happens between 2013 and 2015 to make government interrogation not an issue? ::pulls seat closer, grabs popcorn::

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Arancaytar]

If you're living in the 40s, that means avoid learning about integration.

Derivatives are fine, though.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you just aborted Alan Turing. Good luck with those Germans. Reports from France suggest that they're not so bad as long as your own family tree has the right background.

Which I'm sure it does.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[mysidia]

If you're living in the 40s, that means avoid learning about integration.

Wow. Little known fact.... learning about differentiation and exponentiation was okay though.

Living in 2013? Don't learn about avoiding government interrogation.

It's more like 2001 - 2013

Living in 2015? Don't even THINK about avoiding surveillance.

It's more like 2013 - 2015

2015 - 2020 is Don't even THINK about how this is not democracy

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[sI4shd0rk]

Incest is unethical because of the risk of inbreeding

So because there's a higher risk that children (who wouldn't exist in any form otherwise, I might add) will have birth defects, it's wrong? I don't think I agree with that.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the Clipper ran headlong into two major design problems, due to its closed source design and for which the cryptography expert Dorothy Denning set back her own career by decades of reputation because she got involved in the mess.

      1) It violated a stack of MIT owned patents. Of course, since it was developed in secret, the MIT professor had to *deduce* the patent violations from the very few publicly available details. Look up "Silvio Micali" from MIT for details on the mess.
      2) The "LEAF" checksum, the "Law Enforcement Agency Field" designed to make sure you didn't use private encryption keys, was way too short. Any user could basically forge a checksum that would be privately held by them only, and not kept in the chip manufacturer's escrow vault. That "vault" was about as safe as the vault of "Trusted Computing" escrowed keys that Microsoft is now trying to pawn off as useful for security: in other words, it has *no* protection against abuse by insiders at Microsoft or by governments.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny cant get his policy's through stopped at every turn by republtardation but is able to do every silly thing the internet says. Must be the greatest man who ever lived or there are 100,000 of him. the not including the 100 millions who vote for and will keep voting a democrat.
We seen the results of Trickle down.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your answer is that the USA Federal Government may approve what you learned "yesterday" or "today" but may disapproved of that same information/processes/skills "tomorrow". All knowledge is dangerous at some time and place.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[MaskedSlacker]

Yes, and the people who first broke such rules nearly went to prison. That was your parent poster's point. If you want to be safe, kowtow to the powers that be like the obseqious peon they want you to be.

Or, you know, fuck 'em with a rusty shiv.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[MaskedSlacker]

Sure, if they're both consenting adults, why the fuck not?

Really, what difference could it possibly make to you if they did or didn't? Is your life affected in any possible way?

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[MaskedSlacker]

You're thinking of 'assimilated.' Also, resistance is futile!

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Sique]

Incest is unethical because of the risk of inbreeding; a marriage between siblings with no biological children hurts nobody.

With the same argument you could forbid sexual intercourse between a male and a female, where the sum of their ages is above 80 years. The risk of trisomia-21 is quite high in this constellation. Higher than the risk of birth defects due to inbreeding.

The risk of inbreeding was much higher in tribal societies, because they were on the verge of inbreeding anyway because of their small numbers. Today, our parents were choosing each other literally between millions of potential candidates. The genetic diversity between two New Yorkian siblings is often larger than that of two random members of one of the remaining native tribes - the siblings share 25% of their genetic code, native tribes often 40% and more.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of blaming any specific administrations seems to me to be a fallacy. The elected officials are merely rotating front people for an enduring security state. Notice that policy changes only in minor ways between administration of supposedly competing parties. I'm not saying there's no difference in the parties. I am saying that the president and even congress do not pull the strings on security (i.e., militarized civilian) and military issues and priorities.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Incest is unethical because of the risk of inbreeding

Claim X is/is-not unethical because of a negative result you thought of, or a positive one, is as non-laughable a treatment of ethics in the domain of real philosophy, as would be claiming differential equations can be solved by comparing prettiness of the shapes of the letters and symbols.

Please, speak of something regarding which you are remotely qualified.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Entropius]

I was arguing that not having children was a sufficient condition for permitting sibling marriage; I wasn't claiming it was necessary, and your argument that it is not necessary is pretty sensible.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

All those brownouts in California weren't Enron, they were Obama sending his minions back in time to post his birth notices in the Hawaiian paper. If he had gone back any further in time, the entire western seaboard would have been without power for a month!

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Trouble is, poor people are historically terrible investments. That's why they're poor. So, no, we're not going to take money from rich people and give it to poor people. But thanks for your valuable input!

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[AHuxley]

The problem with CALEA is:
Its not a closed US telco only US police only software like connection. Its just telco software, layers, codes, settings that any country, contractor, group servicing the US telco network might see anytime that its requested.
Sounds good on paper, legally smart: weak codes, junk encryption sold to the "consumer" - but many others are getting the same insights into ongoing US law enforcement operations that it becomes a very open secret in real time.
The US has traded quicker and far less expensive for the security that the classic "climb a pole or enter a junction box to manually tap the line" always offered.
i.e. a lot of extra eyes are seeing the numbers of interest the second they are requested. Some in the USA, some very distant.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[AlphaWolf_HK]

http://www.wnd.com/2008/06/66060/

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[camperdave]

What happens between 2013 and 2015 to make government interrogation not an issue? ::pulls seat closer, grabs popcorn::

Mind reading equipment. How else could they tell that you've been thinking?

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama likes surveillance, because he cannot let a major terrorist attack slip through. If he was a moronic hick from Texas, the public would give him nothing but support after thousands of citizens are slaughtered. With Obama half the country would be calling for his immediate execution as a co-conspirator. He would never had started these programs himself, but since they were already there he took advantage of them. The way he has been treated I would not blame him if he ordered half the country culled by the military.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Fjandr]

I don't think it was meant that he actually could have been President at that time, rather it was a theoretical "if he were back then as he is currently."

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[alannon]

Why would you care? Who's being hurt?

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Greyfox]

Of course not! I'm asking for my bro...friend! Yeah.

No no, just want to be sure before we all declare open season on same-sex relatives is all! Inasmuch as the Jesus people didn't think through the whole gay marriage thing, I don't think they've arrived at this particular conclusion... yet! I don't think they're going to be very happy when some nefarious villain points it out to them! Someone should get a youtube video of the vein popping out of their foreheads when that particular news-tidbit gets dropped in their lap!

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[sumdumass]

since he can't get re-elected he could give guantanamo back to cuba, strategic advantages for future presidents be damned. public opinion be damned.

No, he couldn't. It would take an act of congress to allow him to do so. The president cannot unilaterally make international agreements or rescind them unless they are executive agreements which congress may or may not honor or obstruct. There would have to be a law or a grant from congress allowing the president to give up property in order for him to dispose of Guantanamo.

It may work differently in other countries, but the reality of the situation is that the President of the United States is pretty much powerless on his own. Most of everything he does needs congress behind it. Good leaders usually have no problems with that which might have created an illusion of more independent power misleading our perception in the past. He can create policy in how the executive functions, but he cannot dispose of property or treaties or the likes without congress being involved. The best he could do is order Guantanamo to be evacuated and abandoned but the US would still retain rights to it.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Lisias]

The way I see it, no one would be using encryption nowadays if Obama managed to be president in the nineties.

Were you around in the nineties? That was when Clinton used CALEA to force telecoms to build the exact infrastructure that was exploited after 9/11 by Bush, and later Obama. That was when Clinton pushed the ultimately doomed "Clipper Chip" [...]

And exactly how many people were arrested and prosecuted for teaching others the weaknesses of the cited technologies?

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[sumdumass]

How about a mother and son marrying? Father and daughter?

I think one of the problems with sibling marriages is that one sibling generally ends up in a position of power or authority over the other which is along the lines of why high school teachers aren't allows to date their students.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

A psychiatrist wrote a book a while ago about the struggles of "consenting adults" who are related being in a relationship like that, and there's a massive amount of family-oriented emotional baggage that fucks everything up and makes the relationship much more open to manipulation and abuse. It also makes a very emotionally hostile environment for the children.

So yes, there's a very good reason why nobody thinks incest is a good idea, and your hypothetical "both consenting adults" doesn't even being to handle the psychological issues. It's much more complex than that, and we can't justify incest by "simply" assuming two consenting adults can make such a relationship work without significant harm to all involved.

I don't mind justifying homosexual relationships and am all for gay marriage/equality, but don't ever try to justify incest. Those kinds of relationships are abuse, period.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[s.petry]

If you are going to be a biased prick, at least get the bias right. Jews and Islam are also anti-gay. It's not just "the Jesus people."

Of course the most important consideration is that until roughly 30 years ago ALL Industrial nations considered homosexuality a mental disorder, including the USA. Many "Modern" nations still consider homosexuality a psychological disorder today. If you have doubts, you rush right on over to India, China, or Russia and tell the authorities you want to marry someone of the same sex and watch the reaction. Make sure your friends Youtube that vein popper to play along side the video you have planned.

The US has become as open as any of the European nations in regards to Homosexuality. That has nothing to do with incest however, which is a legal consideration that would be all but impossible to legalize for "marriage". The states could not possible track and ensure exceptions first off, but as someone else mentioned there is also a tremendous amount of psychological considerations that would halt any legalization long before any Religion got involved.

In other words, you can stop spanking it to thoughts of your two sisters "gettin it own" at least in a legal and married sense.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, what difference could it possibly make to you if they did or didn't? Is your life affected in any possible way?

It would be icky and gross.

Like when birds relieve themselves on cars.

Let's outlaw birds.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Vintermann]

but many others are getting the same insights into ongoing US law enforcement operations that it becomes a very open secret in real time.

This is a problem in general with secret surveillance. It works best when it breaks the target's trust in the system, in other words when he thinks he doesn't get tapped. Police and TLA's keep clamoring for this "advantage", unwilling to consider the paradoxical and self-defeating nature of it.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

no one where? encryption was not unknown outside the US you know?

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as there are tax advantages to being married, everybody's life is affected by the resulting shift in tax loads.

Now obviously the state and/or society has an interest in people being married, or there would be no reason for tax advantages. Obviously, not all interests of the state are being met with gay/sibling marriages. Some, like a more stable economic situation by mutual dependency, are.

Now the larger the amount of marriages for purely selfish economic interest is, the worse the return of investment is for society. Naturally, the same holds for heterosexual marriages without romantic interest, but as the arranged marriage business tells us, once you lock a male and a female in a common household and common responsibilities and social expectations and significantly raise the bar where violence and/or rape will get prosecuted, chances are that things work out in almost everybody's interest.

Now if we get to the situation that a prospective spouse will say "sorry, I'm already married to my brother and can't financially afford to divorce him", the whole marriage construct is useless. It's ok if the guy actually is romantically involved with his brother as then he'd be lost for "proper" marriage. And in a similar vein, this holds for gay marriage.

But once there is an actual competition between purely economic marriages and "actual" marriages that the state/society is interested in for other reasons, one has to rethink the approach or everybody will get married, everybody will be already taken, and quite possibly for all wrong reasons.

Which is fine as long as the "right" reasons are not given significant amounts of money, and then one wants to see some return.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe we should just stop learning, I mean can you imagine the danger that universities pose to society? teaching people about:
- math and computers: then those people can hack and/or develop encryption, or 3D print their own stuff instead of buying from the government sanctioned monopolies
- physics and chemistry: then those people can build rockets and/or create dangerous chemicals
- history and literature: then those people will be able to see what happened in the past and how the people that forget the history are doomed to repeat it
- medicine and nurses: then those people know the human body and know what kills it
- languages: then those people can interact with people from other countries
- economy+business+marketing+MBAs: those people destroy companies, countries, put millions of people out of job while exploiting other millions of people in other countries. Oh wait, that's actually the unique purpose in life for MBAs/marketers and the like, maybe we can indeed ban such schools :)

When you look at it, many revolts are started by university students, so, if you want "peace", you just need to keep them out of university, that's a dangerous place. I mean, they get to think and learn to think, by themselves?!. And teachers? man those collaborators should be banned as well!
Prison would be a good alternative, after all, if every person was in prison, it would be hard for any of them to make "mistakes", plus, they would be protected, government would know where everybody is at all times, no need to spy or anything, big money savings to do.
Anybody wanting to hurt them would need to break into the prison, and no sane person would willingly want to try to enter a prison.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Two gay siblings and their pet goat should be able to marry each other, why the fuck not? Is Greyfox against marriage equality or something? (assume the goat is same sex as the siblings)

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[serviscope_minor]

Not sure what your point is. It is, of course hypocritical that bestiality isn't allowed when battery farming is (or arguably meat eating in general).

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in a communist country when the regime was at its end. It was funny to watch because they could not cope with all the surveillance especially as even their own people did not believe in their cause. The system failed and fell because of that. Nothing could stop it. We saw US and other Western countries as anchors of freedom back then. I have started having doubts early but I never envisaged this sort of massive surveillance and disregard for laws with UK agencies devising new innovative ways of interpreting the existing laws and doing it with willing and active cooperation of all western agencies but Italian (apparently). I have never thought that general public would accept that sort of thing. Back then even those that supported regime at work would laugh at the failed attempts to control everything at glass of vodka making jokes about the party with friends and family. I laugh every day now. All these people fighting communism back then thought it was worthwhile and look where we are now.... This all of course for a common good.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Parafilmus]

the siblings share 25% of their genetic code...

How do you figure?

On average, full siblings share 50% their chromosomes.

25% is the average for half-siblings, not full siblings.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Lisias]

The idea of blaming any specific administrations seems to me to be a fallacy.

So, WHY IN HELL we still waste time electing them?

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[ultranova]

The way I see it, no one would be using encryption nowadays if Obama managed to be president in the nineties.

Maybe. But 90's Obama would only have 90's knowledge and technical capabilities. So for you to be right either Bush Sr. and Clinton had so much more moral backbone that they saw what encryption would enable but allowed it anyway, or Obama has so much more foresight he would have foreseen what neither of those two did. Neither option seems likely.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[ultranova]

It's really not much different than sending a guy out with a lineman's suit to climb a pole or enter a junction box to manually tap the line... just quicker and far less expensive.

Which is precisely the problem with it. Inconvenience and expense act as a natural filter to weed out needless surveillance. If it's trivial to tap a phone line, then phone lines get tapped for trivial reasons. That is the real reason why we have so much surveillance nowadays: it's cost-effective to record everything and let computers data-mine the recordings. The law didn't suddenly go crazy and start overreaching, it just gained far longer hands than anybody ever anticipated.

This is one area where you absolutely want every action needing to be justified to the beancounters. Otherwise you get SWAT teams sent to bust someone's door in in the middle of the night because someone thinks they might be growing pot, not because anyone's corrupt but because there's a potential upside (to the police department) of an arrest and no potential downsides, thus it's the rational choice.

The old unstated assumption that you can't catch a petty criminal who doesn't draw attention to themselves no longer holds, thus the balance of power between law and freedom has shifted. And not only that, but the very concept of privacy is quickly being eroded. We need to change our thinking accordingly and get rid of the hypocricy of demanding a squaky-clean public image that can be spoiled by a single Facebook picture of drinking beer, doing drugs or whatever, otherwise life becomes unbearable. Because the genie is not going back to the bottle, and being slave to the PR is not fun.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, if they're both consenting adults, why the fuck not?

Really, what difference could it possibly make to you if they did or didn't? Is your life affected in any possible way?

Because it might reduce the sanctity of his current and 3 previous marriages to have two people attempt to commit to each other for life?

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it's so much an interest in people being married as tradition. Mostly in terms of tangible benefit to society, marriage ideally provides someone to help you share burdens (and thus be less likely to become dependent upon the state), and a stable and consistent environment for raising kids as well as additional input so one person's particular shortcomings aren't passed on to the next generation.

None of these are in any way dependent upon "traditional" marriage. If you, your brother, and your brother's best friend want to pool your resources and adopt a couple of orphans, or agree to raise one of your children with an uninvolved woman, as far as I'm concerned you're helping society more than a couple who fall in love, have kids, fall out of love, and break up because they're now bored with each other.

I know the traditionalists like to rant and wail that we're going to go to Hell in a wheelbarrow due to the downfall of the nuclear family, but there's plenty of evidence in other countries that social stability can be achieved without the traditional marriage construct.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

How fucking hard is it to understand the notion of informed consent? Unless the goats in your neck of the woods are signing legally business contracts, of course, in which case, by all means, trot down the aisle together.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, if they're both consenting adults, why the fuck not?

Really, what difference could it possibly make to you if they did or didn't? Is your life affected in any possible way?

I have fucked my mother, and it was the best sex we've ever had. Granted, we didn't grow up together. Just met when I was was 26 (I was put up for adoption as an infant).

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd go to hell!

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[cheekyjohnson]

Well, I don't know if you were saying that such things should be banned, but I think that banning something entirely merely because it could be abused is, in general, wrong.

The power issue can occur in any relationship, really. A stronger person could intimidate a weaker person. One person could blackmail another person. There are many ways to obtain power over someone else.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Reziac]

"You should not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered."
  -- Lyndon Johnson, 36th President of the U.S.

I'm no fan of LBJ, but this is something everyone should remember when they clamor for legislation... YOUR guys won't always be in charge.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[sumdumass]

Quite true which is why i attempted to add authority. If you attemp to intimidate me into doing something, i can leave, i can tell an authority figutre. If i can't leave or you are the authority figure, i have no choice but to accept it. That is somewhat how brain washing occures in situations like with stockholm syndrome. But more pointedly, if im supposed to learn from you, how do i know it is wrong or not just the way things are?

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[srussell]

Was your post intended to be optimistic? Because it was. The implication is that, within a few years we'll be able to avoid government interrogation and surveillance. By the 90's, we were learning about integration -- the 1940's status quo had reversed. By 2013, many of us were living in states with marriage equality -- the 1990's status quo is in the process of reversing. I'm not as optimistic as you, but it's a nice thought.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[cheekyjohnson]

If you attemp to intimidate me into doing something, i can leave

It's not already so easy for the abused to just leave; they're often controlled by fear.

But more pointedly, if im supposed to learn from you, how do i know it is wrong or not just the way things are?

By using your brain to form your own opinions. That's about the only way out, as far as I can see, and authority figures (including abusive people who become de facto authority figures) can be quite intimidating.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[sumdumass]

Looks like we are in agreement. I must have misread your earlier reply. Still, it is harder to leave your family or school that it is you piano teacher's house.

  And as for forming your own opinions, i know people in their 40s who haven't figured out how to eat with their mouth shut. Thats the way they were raised and don't understand how irritating, gross, and downright anoying it is to see the food in their mouth tumble between their teeth with specs flying out and back onto their plate while the comping and lips smaking makes you want to punch them or something.

(Note, i.can't stand to hear someone eat. Won't even go to restaurants unless i know the background music is loud enough to cover the noise of others. And if it isn't, i find a reason to excuse myself and will eat in the car instead. )

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[Lisias]

The way I see it, no one would be using encryption nowadays if Obama managed to be president in the nineties.

Maybe. But 90's Obama would only have 90's knowledge and technical capabilities. So for you to be right either Bush Sr. and Clinton had so much more moral backbone that they saw what encryption would enable but allowed it anyway, or Obama has so much more foresight he would have foreseen what neither of those two did. Neither option seems likely.

*OR*... Current american people are lazier or more apathetic nowadays.

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[camperdave]

Why would you care? Who's being hurt?

Who's being hurt if I call myself a doctor, or an engineer?

Re:Don't teach, and certainly don't learn ...

[alannon]

Are you serious?? The answer to your question is obvious: Anyone who trusts you to be a doctor or an engineer when you are not is at risk of injury and death! So again: Who's being hurt?

The Rancidest Hole of All

[sI4shd0rk]

My, my, my... What do we have here? I've never seen such a rancid asshole before! My cock will now become One With Bayerhole right this minuteness! I can't wait to shoot my ass-seeking cock right into your rancidhole and get this fucking party started! What say you?

Re:The Rancidest Hole of All

[Anonymous Coward]

i say yes, please

Re:The Rancidest Hole of All

[Redmancometh]

Alpha we know its you now. Fuck off.

Re:The Rancidest Hole of All

[PopeRatzo]

My, my, my... What do we have here? I've never seen such a rancid asshole before! My cock will now become One With Bayerhole right this minuteness! I can't wait to shoot my ass-seeking cock right into your rancidhole and get this fucking party started! What say you?

You would think that General Keith Alexander, head of the National Security Agency, would have something better to do than troll a Slashdot comments section. Aren't there illegal wiretaps to order or surveillance records to be shredded?

Already Slashdotted

[BoRegardless]

Well, maybe later.

Re:Already Slashdotted

[sI4shd0rk]

Is that erection coincidental, or do you want to jam your fetid-as-fuck cock straight into the deepest reaches of my rancid, feces-filled asshole? I think we both know it's the latter. Oh, yeah! I'm wigglin' my bare snap all over your cock! It's a feces-fiesta, and your disgusting cock has full omega access to the deepest, most rancid parts of my smelly asshole! Come on! My foul asshole just opened up like a circular door from a science fiction movie; it's waiting for your fetid little friend! What say you?

Re:Already Slashdotted

[fisted]

Get laid, bro.

Re:Already Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

My cock is way too big for your ass anyway.

Re:Already Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

...or perhaps it's actually a deliberate DOS attack, mysteriously conducted by... "someone". (hint: not Slashdot)

Re:Already Slashdotted

[Jonah Hex]

Coral is very slow for his site but not sure if it's loading anything except the title. It's not timing out yet, we'll see.

Re:Already Slashdotted

[cdagobah]

I removed https from the link and the page eventually loaded (without pictures)...

Re:Already Slashdotted

[WalksOnDirt]

Good tip.

Re:Already Slashdotted

[philip.paradis]

Is a bag of marshmallows involved at some point? That would change everything.

Similar Concerns

[mrclisdue]

I'm in a similar situation as the submitter, but I mostly just tell people how to lie to their wives (partners, etc)

I often get emails from Princes, Damsels-in-distress, penis pill pushers, and a plethora of other fake and scammy looking stuff.

I'm pretty sure it's my wife, because she can't spell worth a shit.

Is the submitter *spoken-for* ? It could just be the partner, messin' with him. I believe I can be of help.

cheers,

Re:Similar Concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait! You're one of those Nigerian princes who owes me some money, aren't you!?!?!?

As said Einstein...

[Lisias]

"Two things are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity. (And I'm not sure about the Universe)".

From now on, these "lectures" will be taught world wide, except by USA. Or do you think the remaining ones will just sit and wait for the feds knock their door?

antipolygraph.org

[AliasMarlowe]

is already a Slashdotted site...

A little ham fisted to be pros.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no special expertise, but this seems a little ham fisted to be agents of the state, don't you think? Seems more likely they'd go with tried and true techniques of human intelligence. I'd beware of any attractive women suddenly taking an interest, or people who appear to have money who want to support the cause, etc. And if you don't already, get a good lawyer and vet everything through him/her. Also, if the authorities do come knocking, make sure you know how to handle the situation so you don't incriminate yourself or make the situation worse (talk to your lawyer, but it amounts to keep your cool and your mouth shut).

Re:A little ham fisted to be pros.

[sjames]

Not really. 'The State' is made up of many agents, some much smarter than others. It could easily be someone bucking for a promotion trying to work out of his league to prove his value.

Just like with drug stings. I have read about well done stings and I have had obvious cops trying to look like teenagers ask me in a parking lot "Would you like to purchase some marijuana?".

Re:A little ham fisted to be pros.

[king neckbeard]

No, agents of the state are often incompetent. They also have the means to use force without reprimand, which enables the incompetent to get further.

Re:A little ham fisted to be pros.

[AHuxley]

Your selling kit and service to the US gov that makes savings on real world investigations. In the past real US gov agents, cleared and extremely skilled would go out into the USA and track down the entire life story of staff to be cleared.
Every family member of interest, school, sealed physical state/court document, friends, lovers, mailing lists, holidays...up and down the family tree.. until all had been found and fully understood.
This ensured most US staff where of a cleared nature and could be trusted with the nations secret work with ongoing tracking.
A lot of private groups, their political friends and others saw a huge amount of cash in doing the same work. They now have the same US gov work load but its more via a sit down 'test' and digital database search.
Your cleared new boss trusts you too. So your internet log is looked over, your digital reading habits and then you get the test with the machine. How you wait, sit, read, present, the post and after test 'questions' 'chat' , called back for more testing sounds: its all so sciencey.
Ideological and faith based traitors fool the digital system just fine. Skilled staff have that one bad day and are lost.

Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[jcr]

1) there is no such thing as a "lie detector". Polygraphs are voodoo.

2) NEVER talk to the police.

HTH,

-jcr

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[ledow]

Despite the fact that most of the world knows this, there's still one country that thinks such things can be admissible in court.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[gmanterry]

It looks like the website has either been Slashdotted or killed by the Feds. I have actually visited the site several times and find it informative. I have been polygraphed one time, and passed it. It was to get a license to become a minimum wage + $.15 an hour security guard at a bank. The site says that the more you believe in the concept of lie detectors the greater the reaction displayed on the machine. It is a great tool for enhancing interrogations because of the fear factor.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[ledow]

So it's actually the WORST device in the world to use then.

Because the people who you don't want to get into the job, the ones who know that it's a load of baloney and any idiot can "pass" the test, will. And the people who are innocent but have that "guilty fear" that comes with natural innocence will "fail".

I'm sorry, but in my country, I'd laugh at you if you asked me to take one. And I'd probably be able to get you into the papers tomorrow in the funny section too, just to show you up. It's just that hilarious a concept. But then, to my knowledge, outside of very, very, very restricted professions we don't have work-prescribed drug testing or any of the other shit either (I don't do drugs, never have, but just the CONCEPT of someone demanding I take a drug test to work somewhere? Fuck off. And I work in education). When did your boss get to control your life?

And for a job in a BANK? FFS. The US must be much more stupid than I suspected.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

1) there is no such thing as a "lie detector". Polygraphs are voodoo.

Translation -- submitter is teacher of a branch of "voodoo" (not to be confused with the actual religion), and scamming people out of their money.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

What country? They aren't in the US.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, the US is not THAT stupid. In many states it is illegal for private employers to polygraph employees. Spooks, military, and law enforcement using them is hardly confined to the US.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[sjames]

Not really. If the voodoo will be used, there is a benefit to knowing the secret handshake that gets you past the screening. That's what the poster teaches. The people actually using the voodoo are the scammers. Unfortunately, they're the ones who are hiring.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[pspahn]

(I don't do drugs, never have, but just the CONCEPT of someone demanding I take a drug test to work somewhere? Fuck off. And I work in education)

I'm having a difficult time thinking of a teacher I know that *doesn't* at least smoke pot. None of the them get drug tested either.

When did the country you live in get to control your life?

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[ArbitraryName]

They certainly are in many places in the US. Nineteen states allow them under various circumstances and the Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceutical set the Federal standard to be the discretion of the judge.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Jane Q. Public]

"Despite the fact that most of the world knows this, there's still one country that thinks such things can be admissible in court."

You don't mean the U.S., do you? Because to the best of my knowledge no jurisdiction in the U.S. allows polygraphs to be used as evidence against a defendant, without their consent. And they'd be stupid to consent.

However, a positive polygraph result can be used in your favor, *IF* the judge will allow it.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Jane Q. Public]

"I'm sorry, but in my country, I'd laugh at you if you asked me to take one."

You seem to have a strange idea of the United States. The job he was referring to is a private employment position for a bank, which is a privately-owned business. They can hire (or not) any security guard they want.

Personally, I would laugh at them too. Same with pre-employment drug screening. I simply won't do that. (And the practice has fallen out of favor, anyway.) But remember: it is private parties who did these things; it had nothing to do with government.

"When did your boss get to control your life?"

For a long time, a lot of people in the U.S. let employers get away with this kind of thing. I don't know why. I don't put up with it, nor do any of my friends. It isn't like that so much, anymore. I think the employers finally figured out that they were chasing away all the smart people.

"The US must be much more stupid than I suspected."

If you're judging an entire country by one person's anecdote, you must be much more stupid than I expected.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[NicBenjamin]

I'm pretty sure the article-writer agrees with you. His site is Antipolygraph. I have no clue if he talked to the police.

When's the last time slashdot actually slashdotted a site? It must have been years ago.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Bob_Who]

It totally sucks. People are being subjected to all sorts of crap. And it is entirely unnecessary. Just because we're coping with reality, that's no excuse to behave like jerks. The golden rule works better than genocide. Some are just slow learners.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[AmiMoJo]

Your website is based in the UK so I'll assume you are too. Lie detectors are used here, including in the criminal justice system and by security services looking to vet people. For example sometimes sex offenders are asked to take a test as part of their parole application.

Unfortunately we are just as dumb as America on this one.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Same with pre-employment drug screening. I simply won't do that. (And the practice has fallen out of favor, anyway.)

Maybe in certain tech circles, but the rest of the country is gung-ho on it. Even the peons at target and best buy have to take drug tests, in the states without good employee protection laws they can also be required to take them randomly during employment too. Can't have those guys doing mind-numbingly boring jobs blowing off a little stress when they get home you know...

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

When did the country you live in get to control your life?

Many say September 11 2001, but a growing number of people are starting to realise it was ealier than that.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not "voodoo". They're Scientology. Look up the "e-meter" and how Scientologists are basiclaly hypnotized with etensive "auditing" sessions to use a pretty poorly designed polygraph to "release their thetans". (Scientology code for releasing the alien spirits from their previous lives that make all their bad thoughts.)

It's been a very effective tool for them to gather confessional people from their own people, to use against them and "dead agent" them if they ever leave the cult. Look up the Scientology key words "sec check", and see testimony from former members who were blackmailed with that "auditing" material when they tried to get out. Nasty, nasty, nasty business.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Jane Q. Public]

"Can't have those guys doing mind-numbingly boring jobs blowing off a little stress when they get home you know..."

That's my main philosophical objection: these things are known to hurt people who are not hurting anyone else, more than they help anybody. It's a stupid practice.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Jane Q. Public]

"Can't have those guys doing mind-numbingly boring jobs blowing off a little stress when they get home you know..."

Here's an interesting point, though: drug screening for pot will likely become an illegal practice in Washington and Colorado. You can't fire or "not hire" somebody for doing something perfectly legal that has nothing to do with the job, if it isn't happening on the job.

That is to say: hiring criteria has to be job-related. Appearance (clothing) can be job-related. Things you cay in public can (in some circumstances) be deemed job-related. But smoking a joint on your day off is in no way job-related. If it's also legal, then it's probably ILlegal for somebody to make it a hiring criterion (or grounds for firing).

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Trogre]

2) NEVER talk to the police.

In what backwards dirtball nation does that rule apply?

In most of the developed world, cops actually help people. It's their job.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

> who know that it's a load of baloney and any idiot can "pass" the test, will.

Except that most don't. It takes some presence of mind and self awareness to consciously beat a polygraph, or better yet some training and some mild sedatives. And most of the people who'd "fail" the polygraph for some criminal attitude or behavior are, in fact, stupid and won't bother to do the research. So they take the test and fail.

The exception is long-term Scientologists, who speand years learning how to make the needles dance as part of "auditing".

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[ancientt]

While I agree in general, for the sake of dissoi logoi, allow me to present the counter-argument. (I had to look up dissoi logoi by the way, it's not a phrase I've used before.)

I've worked in environments where drug tests were required and very similar environments where they were not. After working in both for several years and getting to know co-workers well, I feel I have a pretty good idea how common drug use was in both. I can say that I don't believe it wasn't totally eliminated in either, but was less common in the workplaces that at least used it for initial screening. Both had excellent longetivity and reasonable productiveness from their employees. I'd be hard pressed to make the case that the places that screen get better employees, but if your goal is to hire employees that won't use drugs, I think that testing as part of the employee screening process has some success in discouraging applicants that are likely to use drugs.

Further, I can say that in some jobs I've had, drug use was rather common and in those, testing wasn't even considered. In those jobs where drug use was common, I can say that it cost the employer higher turnover as a result. If I were made manager in that type of situation, I can certainly say that I would institute a drug test screen for hiring. If I knew that my company would be more profitable as a result of that type of screening, even if it was only because the less suitable candidates would be less likely to apply if they expected to fail, then certainly I'd seek to do the screening. I suspect that is why minimum wage jobs are more likely to have a screening policy.

If I worked for a government agency where I knew the stable and productive employees were those most likely to be willing to take a voodoo test, why wouldn't I want to screen for those type of employees? I'll agree that the polograph is essentially voodoo so lets take it literally for the sake of discussion. Lets say that I'm in charge of setting hiring policy for the TSA (voodoo is a reasonable connection in my mind for this.) Lets say that my bosses will agree to a voodoo test where I shake a rubber chicken and maracas in a dark room to "test of theiving spirits" and experience has shown employees willing to take the "test" are less likely to abuse their position, then I'd do the test. Even knowing the voodoo test in itself had no real effect, if I also know that the result is better employees, assuming that's my priority, why not?

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[ewieling]

You can't fire or "not hire" somebody for doing something perfectly legal that has nothing to do with the job, if it isn't happening on the job.

Incorrect. More and more companies are refusing to hire tobacco users. I believe it SHOULD be illegal to not hire someone for doing something entirely legal, but that is not the law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/us/11smoking.html

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/health/UPenn-Health-System-to-Stop-Hiring-Tobacco-Users-191852991.html

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/story/2012-01-03/health-care-jobs-no-smoking/52394782/1

Re: Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Patent Lover]

Caffeine and alcohol are drugs. Other than that, I believe you.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

And the people who are innocent but have that "guilty fear" that comes with natural innocence will "fail".

As someone who has actually been subjected to a polygraph before (I applied for a job with one of the US' three-letter groups when I was fresh out of grad school), I always get a little chuckle when I read comments like yours that seem to be founded on a knowledge of polygraphs that comes from TV, movies, and secondhand sources, since the actual exam leaves virtually no room for "guilty fear". There were no heated questions, people pounding on desks, questions designed to catch me off-guard, or any reason for guilt to remain. Of the 4 hours in that room, during which time I was INCREDIBLY nervous, over half of it was spent providing me with all of the questions in advance, walking through the definitions of even the most trivial words so that I knew exactly what was intended by each question, rephrasing the questions to eliminate "guilty fear", asking me what I planned to answer, and then trying to find ways to rephrase or clarify the question if I was concerned that I could not express the "good" answer to the question.

For instance, I was going to be asked if I had ever compromised the security of government computer systems. In my mind, I had technically done that, since I attended a state university (i.e. a state government institution) and had given a friend who was a former student access to my account so that they could log in as me to get a discount on some software. That's clearly not something the US government cared about, so when I disclosed that minor misdeed to the examiner, he simply rewrote the question to clarify that they were only interested in federal government, not state government, and then asked if that would eliminate my concerns, which it did. Probably half of the questions got minor rewrites like that. And there were even a few cases where—though I couldn't think of anything specific—I felt that the question was broad enough that I was quite possibly guilty of whatever it was asking me about (e.g. I wouldn't be surprised if some purchase I've made at some point in my life has been directed towards funding terrorism without my knowledge). For those cases, the examiner would simply prepend a phrase along the lines of, "To the best of your recollection...". Rather than making it about a deed that may have been forgotten or never known, it made it about what could be remembered, and that's something any of us can discuss honestly without concern or fear.

After that, the examiner simply asked me the questions slowly, repeatedly, and in an even and measured voice for the next few hours. After each set of questions, we'd pause (so that some circulation could get back into my arm, since they were checking my blood pressure during the questioning), and I'd have a chance to tell him if a random thought had run through my head that set my heart aflutter or whatnot, which usually meant that he'd make a note to ask me that question again a few more times over the course of the session. I ended up passing with flying colors (as I should have, since I was honest about all of it; side note: I got the strong impression that passing after a single session was unusual with this particular organization, since several people I talked to after that all expressed shock that I was not called back for additional polygraph sessions, but they all clammed up when I asked if that was unusual for applicants), but another applicant I met there ended up being called back for additional sessions when he tried to lie about his past drug use. He 'fessed up to me after his first session, since he had apparently been caught in his lie and would have to go in the next day.

One thing I'm purposefully not saying is that polygraphs are perfect, but I don't agree with the folks here who think they're voodoo either. I absolutely think people can be trained to beat them. Similarly, I don't doubt that polygraphs can provide indications of lying wh

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[RespekMyAthorati]

But, they are also required to record anything and everything you say.
So, if a dishonest cop/prosecutor wants to use this against you sometime in the future, they can.
Just because the people you are talking to are honest and fair doesn't mean everyone who reads their report will be.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's actually the WORST device in the world to use then.

Because the people who you don't want to get into the job, the ones who know that it's a load of baloney and any idiot can "pass" the test, will. And the people who are innocent but have that "guilty fear" that comes with natural innocence will "fail".

I'm sorry, but in my country, I'd laugh at you if you asked me to take one. And I'd probably be able to get you into the papers tomorrow in the funny section too, just to show you up. It's just that hilarious a concept. But then, to my knowledge, outside of very, very, very restricted professions we don't have work-prescribed drug testing or any of the other shit either (I don't do drugs, never have, but just the CONCEPT of someone demanding I take a drug test to work somewhere? Fuck off. And I work in education). When did your boss get to control your life?

And for a job in a BANK? FFS. The US must be much more stupid than I suspected.

I can't help remembering the Beavis & Butthead episode where the duo had to take a lie detector test. Beavis confessed "I killed a bunch of people once" and was charged with a string of serial killings from before he was born.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[rtb61]

You also forget, psychopaths, those person most likely amongst us all to commit the worst crimes imaginable, pass polygraphs no problem at all, an absence of conscience makes it inevitably. So a test that allows the worst amongst us and in many cases those that actually committed the targeted crimes, pass. Polygraph, a test to catch the ignorant and honest.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

(I don't do drugs, never have, but just the CONCEPT of someone demanding I take a drug test to work somewhere? Fuck off. And I work in education)

I'm having a difficult time thinking of a teacher I know that *doesn't* at least smoke pot. None of the them get drug tested either.

When did the country you live in get to control your life?

It started when they began to allow lawyers to advertise. Everyone and their brother now believe they are entitled to compensation for the slightest of inconveniences. Companies view things like employment polygraphs and drug screening as a cost related to insurance. The corporations possibly get lower rates if they do these things and it also removes a possible avenue for accusations of negligence for hiring a dangerous person.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not entirely accurate....at least here in Michigan (YMMV, of course), I've seen a number of employers that say right in their job ads that you will not be considered if you use tobacco.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[jcr]

I sincerely hope that you never have occasion to lose your starry-eyed naiveté. Far too many people know first-hand how wrong you are.

Cops are obedience enforcers and tax collectors. It's been a very long time since they were anything else.

-jcr

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[camperdave]

2) NEVER talk to the police.

In what backwards dirtball nation does that rule apply?

Perhaps the one where they promise "Anything you say CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU." (Notes: Hollywood version, emphasis mine.)

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd THINK that, but there are places that refuse to hire smokers. Cigarette smokers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/pennsylvania-hospitals-ban-smokers-hiring_n_3517549.html

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Trogre]

Well, in your locale perhaps. My first-hand experience in a developed country has been... well let's just say very different from yours.

Judging from your sig and cynicism, I'm going to assume you're in the United States of America, one of the aforementioned backwards dirtball nations.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

In the United States of America.

It is not the jobs of the police to help people -- it is their jobs to enforce the law. Those are very different things.

If you want somebody to protect you, hire a private security force. If you want somebody to solve a mystery, hire a private detective. If you want somebody to examine your personal affairs in an effort to find something they can fine or imprison you for, contact the police.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[sumdumass]

Nah, never happen. Federal law allows drug screening and it will supersede state law. In fact, federal law requires drug screening for certain jobs and pot is one of the tier 1 drugs specifically outlawed.

Also, federal law allows an out for workers compensation and liability claims if the person is impaired by drugs or alcohol. The problem with pot screening is that it stays in your system without having a detrimental effect on yourself. You cannot currently screen someone to determine if they are under the influence of pot so any amounts in your system over a very small amount is considered a positive.

The issue isn't if you smoked pot, it is if you are under the influence of it at work or while performing a specific safety sensitive job function. Because of the limitations of the screening, it is treated similar to alcohol and any amounts in your system is considered to be influencing you.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can't have those guys doing mind-numbingly boring jobs blowing off a little stress when they get home you know..."

Here's an interesting point, though: drug screening for pot will likely become an illegal practice in Washington and Colorado. You can't fire or "not hire" somebody for doing something perfectly legal that has nothing to do with the job, if it isn't happening on the job.

That is to say: hiring criteria has to be job-related. Appearance (clothing) can be job-related. Things you cay in public can (in some circumstances) be deemed job-related. But smoking a joint on your day off is in no way job-related. If it's also legal, then it's probably ILlegal for somebody to make it a hiring criterion (or grounds for firing).

If the prospective employee can't stay clean long enough to pass the one-time screening at hiring, is s/he really going to be worth a damn as an employee? Getting drunk is perfectly legal too but I wouldn't hire an employee that showed up drunk at the interview.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[s.petry]

One thing to note is that your attorney needs to refuse the polygraph, not you. If you refuse, the prosecutor can and normally will use that as evidence in the trial. "The defendant refused to take a Polygraph!" is just as bad as "The defendant failed the polygraph" to a huge percentage of jurors.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

In Sweden everything is admissable in court so I guess a polygraph would be aswell, however unless you convince the judge that it actually works with value of the evidence would be close to zero.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[pongo000]

Not always.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[jcr]

Lucky you, but don't kid yourself: it is luck.

-jcr

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

Your website is based in the UK so I'll assume you are too. Lie detectors are used here, including in the criminal justice system and by security services looking to vet people. For example sometimes sex offenders are asked to take a test as part of their parole application.

Yes. But the dirty little secret is that they don't actually use the results of the test -- it's just a prop, intended to make the offender more likely to admit to failures to follow their license terms.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Trogre]

That would be the US of A, one of the aforementioned backwards dirtball nations.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlikely to happen. Living in Washington State, I've looked at multiple jobs which randomly test for alcohol and tobacco. Both of which are also perfectly legal. If it is a private business, they can pretty much come up with almost any reason to hire/not hire you.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Jane Q. Public]

Ahem... I was speaking about Washington and Colorado. Not New York, or Philadelphia, or wherever.

I know that in many states, your hiring criteria must be directly job-related. Smoking almost never qualifies as being "job related" unless someone is smoking on the job.

Regardless... even though I don't smoke, I would not knowingly and voluntarily work for a company that bans smokers. I have my standards, too.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Jane Q. Public]

"Nah, never happen. Federal law allows drug screening and it will supersede state law. In fact, federal law requires drug screening for certain jobs and pot is one of the tier 1 drugs specifically outlawed."

Federal law only supersedes State law where (A) the two conflict, AND (B) it's a Constitutional question. The Federal government already knows that its drug laws are unconstitutional usurpations of State power... that's why the Feds have been saying lately they will only try to enforce Federal marijuana laws when STATE laws are violated. People have gotten wise to Federal overreaches, and the Feds want to maintain the illusion of authority where they can.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

"The US must be much more stupid than I suspected."

If you're judging an entire country by one person's anecdote, you must be much more stupid than I expected.

In GP's defence: there's a metric ton of stupid anecdotes on the US out there, but somehow anecdotes about intelligent US things seem few and far between (in my filter bubble at least).

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[stenvar]

You might as well claim that states allow the reading of chicken entrails as evidence in court under Daubert, which would, of course, be utter nonsense. Daubert just says that it is up to the judge to determine whether evidence is admissible. In fact, that's not even what Daubert actually decided; Congress adopted the Federal Rules of Evidence which gave judges this power, and Daubert just ruled that they superseded the stricter prior Frye standard, so the court didn't even rule whether this was a good idea, but simply whether Congressional rules override common law.

Polygraph tests, of course, should be inadmissible in court and should be forbidden as part of police work. This is the job of Obama and Congress. Obama should have pushed regulations against their use in any part of the federal government, and Congress should outlaw them. The fact that Obama instead chooses to persecute people tells you where he actually stands on the issue of scientific evidence.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction. In all of the developed world, cops actually help people. Draw your own conclusions.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be the US of A, one of the aforementioned backwards dirtball nations.

Stop being so dumb. Police anywhere can use what you tell them against you. In the US, at least they warn you.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[ledow]

In the UK: "Inadmissible in court"

And for good reason. That someone wants to take you through some dramatic rigmarole means nothing. You can't "use" them in the UK, for anything. Using the data from them is like saying you don't hire people who are Sagittarians, and would be treated the same way (i.e. unfair hiring practices, constructive dismissal, etc.)

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[myowntrueself]

But, they are also required to record anything and everything you say.

and *specifically* so that it can be used against you.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[sociocapitalist]

1) there is no such thing as a "lie detector". Polygraphs are voodoo.

2) NEVER talk to the police.

HTH,

-jcr

Have a look -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVVNuraly8

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Ihlosi]

and *specifically* so that it can be used against you.

And even worse: Nothing you say can be used to exonerate you, because that would be hearsay and therefore not admissible evidence.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[camperdave]

Warn you? They flat out promise that your words WILL BE used against you.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

"You don't mean the U.S., do you?" ...apparently they do. And also very apparent, that a separate individual responded to your misinformation, thereby handing you your ass, in public. Now why don't you go shut the fuck up some place. Else.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

Goddamn, the idiots are out today. Hey bubba, why don't you just go shut the fuck up. Some place. Else.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

They certainly are in many places in the US. Nineteen states allow them under various circumstances and the Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceutical set the Federal standard to be the discretion of the judge.

Canada uses them for screening purposes in law enforcement hiring. But only for the feds (RCMP) and the spies (CSIS).

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

Cops are obedience enforcers and tax collectors. It's been a very long time since they were anything else.

-jcr

No, nonono, the cops are first and most self-righteous power-trippers. They'll make you miserable just because, for their own sheer satisfaction. When you are cop, I guess it's hard to like too many people when it is so much fun when you don't. Obedience enforcing and tax-collecting just pays their bills - that's work, not fun.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

So... money where your mouth is... Why aren't you naming the country?

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a reflection of biases, mostly. How many intelligent anecdotes (that you've heard, not that you can generate yourself) can you recall about any country, person, or group of people? Stupid anecdotes are more funny, or outrage-inducing, or worldview-reinforcing, so they are more common.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[chihowa]

A glimmer of understanding, but not enough to apply it to those dirty Americans, eh? It's used exactly the same way in the US.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[TangoMargarine]

NEVER talk to the police without your lawyer present.

FTFY. Obviously some amount of speaking is necessary for processing and whatnot, or the system wouldn't be able to function.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[TangoMargarine]

I can say that I don't believe it wasn't totally eliminated in either

So you're saying you believe it *was* totally eliminated in at least one of them?

Not( Not( eliminated in #1 || eliminated in #2 ) )

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

Police: "Hi sir, how are you today?"
Citizen:"Hi Officer. What seems to be the problem?"
Police: "Do you know why I pulled you over?"
Citizen: "No..., I don't think I was speeding".

Police: "Your honour, when I asked the defendant how he was, he said he was high. When I asked him to describe his situation, he seemed confused and evasive. He also mentioned something about speed"

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

My friend lives in Washington state and after they voted to legalize Marijuana use there his job started random drug testing (Marijuana included).

This was in response to it being legalized as previously they didn't have a drug testing policy at all.

One step forwards..

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[TheSpoom]

Are you a lawyer? In any case, where did you get the idea that federal supremacy is limited to issues where "it's a constitutional question"?

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[delt0r]

Well you should have more to not like. Most of these tests are not proper tests and have stupid high false positive rates. For example even on Mythbusters they showed that they would fail the test for a long time after eating a poppy seed cake.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[intermodal]

I've seen eight cops so far this morning. All of them were just harassing citizens. They like to call it traffic enforcement.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[delt0r]

Well turning up to work drunk can and should get you fired.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[AmiMoJo]

You can't use them in court, but that isn't what they are for. They are for intimidating people, and are used extensively for that here. As I pointed out sex offenders are asked to take the test, and then their failure to accept used against them. Not directly, but the psychologist evaluating them writes "uncooperative" on their report.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[cusco]

Now that pot is legal in both Washington and Colorado the companies like Target are scratching their heads about what to do with the drug test results. I think for now they're ignoring positive marijuana results, but that's not an actual policy yet.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[ancientt]

You caught me being my own worst editor. I meant "I can say that I don't believe it was totally eliminated in either" but had previously typed "It wasn't totally eliminated in either." When I changed my mind about how to best phrase it, I missed that.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Jane Q. Public]

"Are you a lawyer?"

Lawyers in general, (though they tend to feel, and assert, otherwise), have a rather feeble grasp of Constitutional law and history. Ask any well-known Constitutional scholar (except Obama, since he's already known to be a liar). Lawyers study what to present to a judge in order to win cases; very few have much particular knowledge of Constitutional law and history.

I, on the other hand, am a long-time student of such history, which puts me far ahead of the vast majority of lawyers.

"In any case, where did you get the idea that federal supremacy is limited to issues where "it's a constitutional question"?"

Perhaps I should have worded it better, but this is what I meant: U.S. Constitution, Article VI.

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

Note that the Constitution itself says that only laws "in pursuance of" the stipulations of the Constitution itself, are "the supreme law of the land". Therefore, any unconstitutional law is NOT supreme.

The Constitution is a document that limits the power of the Federal government; that is its primary purpose. Not the "general welfare clause", not the "interstate commerce clause", nor the "supremacy clause" give absolute power to the Federal government. If it exceeds its authority (according to the founders themselves), the result is not law. It is "of no force, null, and void".

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

It is still a federal crime. Besides, they could test for HPV and fire someone for that if they felt like it. All 50 states are "at will" which means you can be fired (or quit) for any reason or no reason at all, as long as it isn't one of the very few protected reasons (e.g. you can't be fired for being black but you can be fired for being gay).

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Jane Q. Public]

"Well you should have more to not like. Most of these tests are not proper tests and have stupid high false positive rates. For example even on Mythbusters they showed that they would fail the test for a long time after eating a poppy seed cake."

I am aware of this. That is part of my objection. Further, even if they did not fail due to non-restricted substances, they would still show more false positives than false negatives, due to the Base Rate Fallacy.

That's why I said it hurts more innocent people than it punishes the guilty.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Jane Q. Public]

"Well turning up to work drunk can and should get you fired."

I would say that's usually "job related", so it has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

But even then, there are exceptions:

(1) It doesn't get you fired if you're the boss.

(2) If you are working for yourself, and you get the job done, it probably won't get you "fired".

(3) Company party?

Etc. ... See, the problem with these absolute statements, and "zero tolerance policies", is that they never work. People break them all the time. Often the people who impose or enforce the policies are the biggest hypocrites of them all.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Trogre]

I guess it is luck that I wasn't born in the US, I'll grant you that.

I don't mean to brag at all, I genuinely feel sorry for you and your plight. I sincerely hope you manage to escape that cesspool some day and see how it's done in the rest of the world.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[sumdumass]

The drug testing laws have been upheld in court many times. I'm actualy subject to random tests due to my job and i have looked into this for wuite a while.

Also, the courts have said that federal bans on pot use supercede state laws.whether it is constitutional or not, the courts are allowing prosecution and conviction.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

In what backwards dirtball nation does that rule apply?

that rule applies in any country where you can be arrested for "resisting arrest" (with no accompanying valid charge for which one could actually be arrested).

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Trogre]

Just to help further illustrate the poor state your country is in, here is an article from today's newspaper, where a hitch-hiker was picked up by someone on the run from cops.

Note the last few sentences:
Police gave the backpacker a more sedate ride to Paihia and showed him the sights in the area before delivering him to his accommodation.
[The local police sergeant] said [the backpacker] would also be offered help from Victim Support if he needed it.

Of course the police aren't all rainbows and roses, but this sort of thing (the police helping I mean, not the car-jacking) happens all the time in civilised countries.

Again I'm not trying to boast in any way; simply pointing out that your experiences are not "normal" for a developed society and should never be considered acceptable. What are you going to do about it?

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't fire or "not hire" somebody for doing something perfectly legal that has nothing to do with the job, if it isn't happening on the job.

Incorrect. More and more companies are refusing to hire tobacco users. I believe it SHOULD be illegal to not hire someone for doing something entirely legal, but that is not the law.

I would rather hire someone who smokes pot at home than a cigarette smoker who is constantly stepping out for smoke breaks that they feel do not count as their regular breaks. Not to mention their smoking sites are usually littered with cigarette butts.

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[jcr]

FYI, I get 439,000 hits on a google search for "police brutality in New Zealand". What are YOU going to do about cleaning up your own country?

-jcr

Re:Two things to remember about polygraphs:

[Trogre]

Well I do a bit, as should anyone else. Not that it absolves us of any responsibility, but we have a Police Complaints Authority that deals specifically with, well, complaints about police and often gets a result (officers stood down and/or new policies in place).

Of course there are still plenty of cases of serious police misconduct but they are very few compared with what they actually do, and the scum they have to deal with. As with anything, some people will whine no matter what - people complain of brutality for example when cops show up at out-of-control parties and stop drunken students cutting each other up with broken bottles.

I'm pretty sure it's a cultural thing. Here it is apparent that cops are for the most part good people who want to help. The odd scumbag on a power trip who makes it into the force is usually seen as such and dealt with. Perhaps that good:scum ratio is inverted in your country?

Again, you have my pity.

tacit admission

[globaljustin]

either Polygraphs are bullshit or these charges should be dropped...

by setting up the sting and charging the guys for what they did, they government is admitting that it is possible to fool the polygraph

if it is possible to fool the polygraph it leaves no doubt that the polygraph is not scientific or useful

by proving these men guilty, the prosecution simultaneously proves that the lie detector is a farce and negates the logical need for the entire charade in the first place

a good lawyer could get a not guilty verdict IMHO

Re:tacit admission

[TitusGroan8856]

polygraphs don't work, it's pseudoscience. A real justice system wouldn't allow such nonsense anywhere near it.

Re:tacit admission

[phantomfive]

FWIW it is possible to tell the complete total truth, and still be convicted and sentenced to prison for a long term (or worse). Although your logic makes sense intuitively, it doesn't make sense legally.

Just ask Edward Snowden.

Re:tacit admission

[Opportunist]

It's a psychological spiel. What a polygraph does is to note down reactions, both voluntary and involuntary. When you get asked questions, your body reacts. The idea is now that lying requires more "work" from you than telling the truth, since you have to fabricate it.

In reality, though, the way you react is dependent on so many facets that whether you lie or tell the truth plays a minor role, if any. It's like saying that you can tell what TV program someone is watching by looking at how much power he uses. While technically, in theory, possible, there are so many other appliances running in his house (or not) that their combination pretty much drowns out that information in way too much noise.

What is left of the polygraph is that people might THINK it works, and hence react differently. The goal is to give you the impression that it not only can, but WILL tell, without a doubt, that you're lying if you lie. So you get told that it can easily spot when and how you lie (it cannot), that it will be used in court against you (it cannot), that they used it multiple times to convict people (they have not) and so on.

The psychology around it is the actual "value" of it during an interrogation. Just like in medieval times showing the instruments of torture were usually enough to extract confessions, so does telling people about the polygraph. The main difference probably being that the instruments of torture can actually deliver what is promised, something the polygraph cannot.

Re:tacit admission

[globaljustin]

yeah i know what you mean...they say his *intent* was to help people evade detection (not necessary to specify type of detection...be it a records search, interview, drug test, etc)

my argument is essentially: how could doing something impossible be illegal? as another poster pointed out since these polygraphs are bullshit, the possibility of false-positive is high and troublesome for any job seeker in this market!

i will have to see the transcripts of the recorded conversations, where he allegedly tried to help a guy pass even though he'd sexually abused a minor, before I consider the prosectutions line of thinking

as it stands, this guy did not disclose any secret or protected information...the info he taught is freely available...i suspect he hooked people up to his own polygraph, but that's not illegal

Re:tacit admission

[Anonymous Coward]

They are fully aware that the polygraph is BS. But it's useful BS, in that they can use it to interrogate people and push people into saying things they wouldn't otherwise, in an attempt to satisfy the machine. It allows them to confront you when they have no evidence to back it up and makes their bluffs appear more credible.

So it "works" it just doesn't detect actual lies.

Re:tacit admission

[Anonymous Coward]

We already know that polygraphs don't work. This is why they aren't allowed as evidence in court.
A polygraph is scientific in that it measures actual responses of the body to certain stimuli.
But there is no real mapping from lying to to those responses, apart from that some people have certain reactions, and other people have different reactions, or no reactions at all.

Re:tacit admission

[Anonymous Coward]

"he hooked people up to his own polygraph, but that's not illegal [YET]"

There FTFY.

Re:tacit admission

[pepty]

Whether or not instructors can change true positives to false negatives doesn't affect the charges:

But instructors may be prosecuted if they know that the people they’re teaching plan to lie about crimes during federal polygraphs, he said.

In that scenario, prosecutors may pursue charges of false statements, wire fraud, obstructing an agency proceeding and “misprision of felony,” which is defined as having knowledge of serious criminal conduct and attempting to conceal it.

They could both prosecute and claim the instruction is worthless.

Re:tacit admission

[Anonymous Coward]

Snowden filled out what amounts to an NDA.

Re:tacit admission

[Anonymous Coward]

She could take a polygraph to prove her innocence. ;-)

Re:tacit admission

[Anubis IV]

if it is possible to fool the polygraph it leaves no doubt that the polygraph is not scientific or useful

So, if I understand you correctly, the possibility of having false negatives renders a test unscientific and useless? I've seen this notion stated repeatedly here on Slashdot when it comes to polygraphs, and it's one that needs to be stomped out. It's illogical, dismisses the fact that we have the entire field of statistics for handling the problem, and fails the sniff test since a huge amount of current science would have to be thrown out if we followed this rule.

If we have designer drugs that are undetectable by a particular test and thus yield false negatives, does that make the test useless? Well, yes and no. Yes, it's useless for detecting those designer drugs, but in no way does its uselessness in that area affect its continued usefulness in other areas. Use it for testing job applicants, not Olympic athletes, in other words. Nor does it magically become unscientific when the designer drugs are first manufactured. The science is as sound today as it was yesterday (see note at end of post). So, since you and I agree that the polygraph can generate false negatives, we need to look at how it's being used before we can say that "it leaves no doubt" that it is neither scientific nor useful.

In the case of job applications for high-security positions, the polygraph is being used as one of several filters to weed out unsuitable applicants (as well as to direct background investigators towards possible trouble spots). Again, not every applicant will be trained to defeat the polygraph, so it can catch at least some of them (again, see note at end of post). The presence of false negatives means that it isn't a perfect test and that it will need to be supplemented with others, but their presence does not suddenly render it useless. Alternatively, in the case of criminal investigations, not every suspect will be trained to beat a polygraph, so, just as the drug test may only be useful for a subset of the drugs, so too would the polygraph only be useful for a subset of the population. And it's safe to say that a false negative inflicts no harm in that case, since it would mean that the investigators would simply gain no new leads to pursue.

Long story short, the fact that it's beatable doesn't make it useless. It just makes it useless against highly trained individuals, but the polygraph gets used on a number of other people, for which it still can provide some benefit. As for being unscientific...well, the notion that the presence of false negatives renders a test unscientific is simply ludicrous. I hope you realize that already.

(NOTE: I believe that there are valid arguments regarding false positives being a major concern for polygraphs, as well as that it may be unscientific for reasons other than what the previous poster claimed. That said, for the sake of argument I ignored those issues and restricted my comments to false negatives, since they were the basis for my beef with the previous poster's comment. I.e. He may have had the right answer, but his math was wrong along the way, and I felt compelled to point that out.)

Re:tacit admission

[Anonymous Coward]

The "justice system", aka courts, don't let polygraphs anywhere near them. Polygraphs are not admissible in US courts. Cops only use them on suspects who don't know any better, and it might make those suspects more honest. That is all.

Re:tacit admission

[Anonymous Coward]

The psychology around it is the actual "value" of it during an interrogation. Just like in medieval times showing the instruments of torture were usually enough to extract confessions, so does telling people about the polygraph. The main difference probably being that the instruments of torture can actually deliver what is promised, something the polygraph cannot.

That depends on what you think is promised with respect to the instruments of torture. If you are thinking that they can deliver great pain and injury, that is very much true. If you think that the interrogator will apply them until you tell the truth, that was not at all true. He would apply them until heg got the answer they wanted to hear. Confessions were extracted from both the guilty and the innocent, and both the guilty and the innocent were denounced at the direction of the interrogator. Those being investigated learned that their challenge was to discern what it was that the interrogator wanted to hear and to tell him that so he would stop hurting them. But the average torturer was no doubt a psychopathic SOB who would toy with his subjects. Who else would take such a job?

I suppose we could ask the CIA and other knuckle-draggers around the world who still do that job today.

Re:tacit admission

[Sockatume]

There is no evidence that it produces a reliable difference between truth and lying by any mechanism, whether the intimidation effect you propose or otherwise.

Re:tacit admission

[TitusGroan8856]

that's just wrong, there are states where they are inadmissible - but their a plenty of states that do admit them into court proceedings. I also consider the police to be part of the justice system as they're the ones that drag you into court - they should have no truck with these pointless tests either. In point of fact - if the police do ask you to take the test and you beat it - they simply consider that you beat the test, not that you are innocent turning the whole tacking of the test into a lose-lose situation.

Re:tacit admission

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the polygraph is that there is no correlation between lying and failing the polygraph test. That's not just some false positive and some false negative. You better toss a coin instead of using polygraphs. It's much cheaper.

Re:tacit admission

[s122604]

No: they are bullshit AND these charges should be dropped
The polygraph is a turn of the century medical quackery masquerading as science
not only are there ways to "fool" it (i.e. manipulate the biofeedback it records to confuse the "analyst"), but with no countermeasures employed, it has been proven (many times actually) to have a false positive and false negative rate so high as to render its results statistically worthless...

Re:tacit admission

[Anubis IV]

I was simply addressing an irrational line of thought engaged in by the previous poster, which was solely related to his ideas regarding false negatives (to summarize: I'm not saying they're useful or scientific, I'm just saying they're NOT useless or unscientific for the reasons the previous poster said). You're talking about other reasons why polygraph exams aren't useful (specifically, despite saying they don't apply, you're actually talking about false positives), and those reasons were explicitly outside the scope of my comment. As I said, I was merely addressing a problem in the other poster's reasoning, not with his conclusions.

Re:tacit admission

[intermodal]

When I was applying at a fire department back in 2006, I had to take a polygraph. After a few random questions of no consequence to the hiring process but probably to his process (one of which was my name, and I flatly lied to the guy and he got mad at me and I grinned and said that I thought he needed a lie to compare things to), he made it clear that the technology was BS by asking the following questions: (Answers in parenthesis)

"Have you looked up any information on polygraph tests before coming to this test?" (Of course.)

*annoyed, trying to imply wrongdoing* "Why did you have to go and do that?" (Because only an idiot doesn't study for a test, especially with a job on the line.)

*clearly more annoyed* "Are you trying to hide something?" (I have no such need.)

*clearly pissed off, but trying to remain composed* "Do you believe polygraphs work?" (Not at all.)

I passed the test, but I suspect my file was annotated with some unfriendly remarks.

Re:tacit admission

[cyberchondriac]

It's a psychological spiel.... Just like in medieval times showing the instruments of torture were usually enough to extract confessions, so does telling people about the polygraph. The main difference probably being that the instruments of torture can actually deliver what is promised, something the polygraph cannot.

Maybe, maybe not. Enough innocent people in history (witch hunts come to mind) have "confessed" just to get the torture to stop, so they're actually lying.

Re:tacit admission

[Toad-san]

Sir, you have a twisted brain! But I DO like the logic!

Re:tacit admission

[Opportunist]

Oh trust me, those instruments of torture can deliver the torture they promise!

The US of A

[vikingpower]

are turning into a police state, or at least into the velvet-gloved version of it: a surveillance state. So are certain western European states. What are we going to do about it ?

Re:The US of A

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to vote for the turd sandwich next time. That'll fix it.

Re:The US of A

[ganjadude]

not if i can help it

Go giant DOUCHE!!!!

Re:The US of A

[erroneus]

What really kicks me in the ass is that all of our legislators and nearly every adult in the US remembers a time when we measured ourselves by what we are not and what we will not and do not do. Now we are doing it. People are STILL saying "we live in a free country."

Re:The US of A

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't blame me I voted for Kodos

Re:The US of A

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been this way since the country was founded, only problem is very few that bothered to notice. And it is still the same way, what cracks me up about this country, is when it comes to government we are no better then a military ran country, and are citizens are complete zombies. Look at other countries and there people know bullshit when they see it, and try to do something about it, besides the arrogant notion of voting. And the US and UK seem to want these other countries to have the same defunct democratic system that hasn't worked. Even they know it doesn't work thus they want to run things there own way, or they have there own versions of democratic system.

Really a sad time to live no matter where in the world you live. We've been reduced to rats in a maze, while our masters control where and what "they decide" you can and cannot do.

Re:The US of A

[Opportunist]

You're both deluded, only voting for the third choice can change anything! Because it is better than either of the two, for sure, because it's so alternative!

Re:The US of A

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

nearly every adult in the US remembers a time when we measured ourselves by what we are not and what we will not and do not do. Now we are doing it.

Try asking anyone under 30 if they know what the phrase "Papers Please!" denotes - I've had no luck finding a single person in real life who knows about it.

Re:The US of A

[mysidia]

Try asking anyone under 30 if they know what the phrase "Papers Please!" denotes

It's just two words... It's a lot of things.

It's when the Military place soldiers in a natural disaster area such as New Orleans after Katrina requiring you to show military ID or proof of government authorization, to avoid arrest, or having vehicles impounded

It's an attack onAmerican birthright citizenship

It's two words that succinctly describe America's dark future.

Personal and Professional Encounters with Surveillance

anti-state.com: May I See Your Papers Please?

It's what Mr. Hiibel of Nevada went to jail for refusing to comply with

It's what police do now to ordinary people minding their own business.

It's congress work on the REAL ID act

It's a name given to a section of an Arizona law upheld by the Supreme court.

It's the name of a complaint against changes the US is making starting this Fall 2013 to further restrict the free travel of Americans and greatly increase the difficulty of US citizens getting passports

It's the name of a dystopian video game about communist immigration control.

It's the name of an anti-TSA blog

It's a request you comply with when asked by the police; otherwise, you face immediate arrest.

• Texas 77 year old Grandmother arrested after refusing to show ID
• Police arrest for refusing to show ID while on private property
• Exhibit 1
• Exhibit 2: According to the Supreme Court, the police may arrest for failure to identify
• Arrested at Circuit City for refusing to show ID: "It all started when I refused to show my receipt to the loss prevention employee at Circuit City, and it ended when a police officer arrested me for refusing to provide my driver's license."
• I follow the blog of a guy who walked across the country (California to New York) last year. He was arrested in Greencastle, Indiana last summer, after a prison worker called the police to report him as a suspicious person after they exchanged words while he was walking past the prison complex.
• Florida Cops Tase man for refusing to show ID
• Refusal to show id in Georgia (arrest)
• Man in Arizona arrested for refusing to surrender firearm to officers who refused to show their own ID

Re:The US of A

[Anonymous Coward]

You hear it in the USA whenever you try to have a glass of wine with your meal in a restaurant, no matter how old you are!

Re:The US of A

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you've proven you are under 30 and don't know what the OP was referencing... The guys who wrote that video game of the same name definitely know.

Re:The US of A

[Anonymous Coward]

A bloodied catheter?

Re:The US of A

[Anonymous Coward]

are turning into a police state

This is the 21th century, we're past the turning point by now. You'll need to recalibrate your time machine and try again.

Re:The US of A

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Its the bit in Last Crusade just before he punches the Nazi out of the airplane.

Re:The US of A

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, I was demanded by a cop to show my ID after I had pulled into my driveway. He just got real mad and left when I refused. I wasn't the one driving, though. The guy driving was drunk as shit yet blew a 0.00 on the breathalyzer. Cop said, "it's not him I'm worried about; it's you! I'm not sure if you're drunk or on drugs or what!"

Good job

[Anonymous Coward]

And now you've executed a denial-of-service-attack-by-proxy on your website as well, due to the /. effect.

Why do they go through all the trouble?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's one thing I'll never understand about polygraphy as a whole. Clearly, the US Government (and pretty much anyone else who uses polygraphy) must know that it's a pseudo-science and that the test cannot predict whether or not someone is lying. So why do they go through so much trouble to defend it? Surely, all of this money they're investing into the machines themselves, paying the personnel to operate and "analyze" them, and trying to shut down people who openly state that the test is a fake and can be beaten could be spent more efficiently on better background checks or other investigative measures that could produce real evidence of wrongdoing.

Re:Why do they go through all the trouble?

[M1FCJ]

In the modern world, (i.e., Europe) polygraphs are not considered reliable evidence, in some countries completely forbidden.
Mainly in the Americas it's much more trusted.

Re:Why do they go through all the trouble?

[jcochran]

The answer to that question is quite simple. Some years back, I had to take a polygraph and frankly, it felt as if a "game" was being played where I didn't know the rules. There were some issues with my test so they rescheduled me for a followup. Since I didn't like the feeling that there was a game being played, I spent the time before the follow up researching polygraphy. Turns out that there's a lot of information on the subject and I also found out that there was a classified government study on the effectiveness of polygraphs. I didn't see the contents of that study, but [i]if[/i] that study reflected the information available in the public literature and [i]if[/i] I were to be a classification authority, I too would have classified the study. The reason is because the public literature boils down to the following.

Polygraphy as a tool for distinguishing truth from lies is totally worthless. However, as a tool for eliciting voluntary confessions from naive subjects, it's quite effective.

So as long as it's kept mysterious and secret, it's quite useful. But once the pool of naive subjects is gone (and they would be gone if the reality of polygraphy were widespread), then that tool becomes worthless.

Re:Why do they go through all the trouble?

[Velex]

I think it's a form of hypnotism really. The government has a vested interest in keeping the masses hypnotized that polygraphs are magical lie detectors. Therefore, anyone who knows how to defeat the righteous magic must be some kind of evil super-genius. For some reason, this works in the USA. Maybe it's just yet another sign of a failed public education system and anti-intellectual sentiment that demonizes critical thinking.

We see the same kind of woo and bullshit when it comes to "cyber" security. Big companies are our angels and gods. Therefore, they must have good control over this magic called computer networking. Furthermore, if somebody comes along and accesses information they're not supposed to be able to, well, we see trivial things such as changing a get parameter in a URL hysterically painted as some evil supergenius technique all the time.

Again, keep in mind that there's nothing magical about hypnotism, either. It's just that it's easier to hypnotize somebody who places more value on "fitting in" and being seen as "normal" or "not special" than it is to hypnotize somebody who places value on being objectively correct. Somebody who is easily hypnotized, as the people in the USA seem to be on a number of issues, is merely somebody who would rather consent and do what's expected, i.e. do what the hypnotist is suggesting, so that they don't stand out as somebody with scary superpowers that could resist a hypnotist.

Of course, the hypnotist, the hacker, and the polygraph administrator are all modern versions of the witch doctor or wizard. The witch doctor and wizard draw their power, naturally, from superstition and a culture that has a deep seated need for wizards and witch doctors to exist.

Re:Why do they go through all the trouble?

[Anonymous Coward]

Polygraphs aren't accurate or reliable enough to be admitted into evidence in a court of law, but they are considered reliable enough for informal use and, perhaps, as a means of catching people untrained/unpracticed/unfamiliar with how the polygraph works in a lie. They are also excellent tools of intimidation, again for the untrained. Sometimes the mere threat of a polygraph can get someone to confess before they're even strapped into the machine.

You can bet, however, that when the Russians or Chinese train their spies, that they train them to defeat these machines. They might be good for catching Joe Blow who decides to go rouge but hasn't actually had any espionage training from the state they're selling secrets to.

Re:Why do they go through all the trouble?

[king neckbeard]

Beause they are a superstitutious and cowardly lot.

Re:Why do they go through all the trouble?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are not considered reliable evidence and are not allowed in court in the USA. Employers can investigators can use them, but can't admit the results into court. It's also one case where remaining silent may be used against you "he refused a polygraph, so he must be guilty".

Re:Why do they go through all the trouble?

[mevets]

It is a multi-faceted intimidation tool. It works by convincing the target that their defence is hopeless. Knowing it is a myth doesn't help if everybody else in the penal(*) system believes in it. There is value in propping up the myth - it helps close cases. Even if you are falsely incarcerated because of it, you were probably guilty of something....

(*) Of course, if it were a justice system, such chicanery would have no place.

Re:Why do they go through all the trouble?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying we're all like that kid in The Wire, where the cops put his hand on the scanner-copier and asked him questions. When they thought he was lying they pretended like the copier printed out "FALSE" on a sheet of paper; "TRUE" if they thought he was telling the truth. "Works every time".

Re:Why do they go through all the trouble?

[Anonymous Coward]

My experiences with a polygraphy test where like this, in addition there seems to be a fair amount of expert interpretation required. My expert missed a fib, but zeroed in on something else rather minor claiming there was "something more", to which I denied, but he insisted. Might have just been an interrogation technique to get another crack at my biological data to really see if anything was there. My expert also started the session with a speech about his extreme morality point of view, probably trying to amp up my reactions. I was hired, so either I passed, or the hiring manager took me anyway.

Re: Why do they go through all the trouble?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard that they are using them on sex offenders in the UK to determine weather they can be released or not when their prison time is served.

Re: Why do they go through all the trouble?

[Anonymous Coward]

>I've heard that they are using them on sex offenders in the UK to determine weather
Does that work any better than using them to determine truth?

Re:Why do they go through all the trouble?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG polygraphs are radioactive - I read it on the internet

Re:Why do they go through all the trouble?

[pepty]

Different standards for different situations. Criminal cases require proof beyond reasonable doubt. Fingerprint matches based on 10 points in common aren't pseudoscience and are correct quite often, but will have higher rates of false positives than courts find acceptable. Polygraphs have never risen to the "beyond reasonable doubt" level, but are still better than flipping a coin.

Ha ha ha

[For a Free Internet]

What a joke you are. Marx is more relevant than ever.

Like Lenin taught us -- you speak of freedom, but freedom for WHAT CLASS? Under capitalism ther is free buying and selling. Under communism there will be free people. To get to communism we need to free the workers and put the capitalists under the workers dictatorship.

Re:Ha ha ha

[K. S. Kyosuke]

What a joke you are. Marx is more relevant than ever.

True. And also it's true that five Marxes beat one Marx any day of the week.

Re:Ha ha ha

[garyebickford]

Fah. I was only 14 when I did a comparative analysis of communism and capitalism. Having some background in electronics theory and associated systems approach, I was able to demonstrate that communism is always doomed, because it is not a stable economic system. All stable systems must have both positive and negative feedback loops. (The screech when you put a microphone too close to a speaker is one example of a runaway system, that finally blows something if not corrected.) The classic aphorism of communism is "too each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities". This is essentially two uncoupled, undamped systems with unlimited response - some people have "unlimited needs" and work the system; other people will be worked to death.

I later discovered that in the real world, this lack of feedback in the economic system is dealt with in two ways - feedback through the political system (corruption of various sorts, political appointments, etc.), and through the black market - a hidden ad hoc capitalist mechanism, often with a political component (bribing the officials).

So regardless of capitalism, communism is a dead end, and makes no mathematical, much less economic, sense. There is a kind of 'communism of the rich' which is analogous to what techies do with open source, and what Star Trek assumed due to the Replicator technology. It's basically, "to each according to his needs, there's plenty to go around."

While capitalism has its issues, it is a dynamic complex adaptive system where the excesses can be curbed by _reasonable_ regulation. The complaints that Marx had back in the 1800s were in response to the excesses of what was basically a post-feudal era where companies were generally owned by one, or a small set, of people with zero requirement to take into account any public opinion, and could act as feudal barons. The rise of incorporation has moved capitalism increasingly toward an economically democratic model, where every company must take into account the political and economic environment.

In practice, no communist government has resulted in 'free people', except in the sense (as an old Soviet joke goes), "we are free - to work ourselves to death"

Re:Ha ha ha

[Anonymous Coward]

Having some background in electronics theory and associated systems approach

Well, this already looks very promising...

Re:Ha ha ha

[MaskedSlacker]

So what you're saying is that the only negative feedback mechanism in communism is political intervention and the only negative feedback mechanism in capitalism is political intervention, therefore capitalism is better?

Color me unconvinced.

Re:Ha ha ha

[garyebickford]

No. Capitalism has a host of feedback mechanisms - supply and demand being the archetypical one. Like any good complex adaptive system, when a new 'species' (for example a new technology and resulting new market) appears, the other entities in the system dynamically adapt. This is very similar to the evolutionary ecosystems model. Political feedback, to my mind, should mainly be of the sort that prevents fish that are too big from swimming up small creeks and blocking water flow. (I know that's a really obscure analogy, but I like it.

A major distortion that exists presently is what I would consider incorrect government policies that encourage near-monopolies and effective monopolies. In the US, anti-trust laws are directed primarily at maintaining two things: preventing unfair advantage of a company's monopoly position, and maintaining a fiction of competition among two to four dominant players.

If I had my druthers, I would prevent any company with more than 10% of a market to buy or take control of any other market participant for any reason.

From my own studies of free enterprise as a CAS, it appears to me that if any company controls more than perhaps 20% of a market, or if fewer than 10 or so companies constitute a large percentage of a market, they have effectively too much monopoly power. I have not done the research in detail - I was prepared to work on the PhD in Economics and this was going to be my area of research, but I did not pursue it at that time, so these are 'back of the envelope' numbers.

Nevertheless, it's instructive to use ecosystems as an analogy. A climax forest may have only a dozen or so tree species but it is very rare for it to have as few as four or five. Aspen trees are interesting - a particular aspen grove may in fact be a single genetic individual. But the environment varies enough that this grove can not take over 100 square miles. This is because the local environment changes constantly, so the area next to the Aspen grove may be better for maple, or fir, or scrub grassland.

So to maintain the maximum diversity, and dynamic adaptability and efficiency, the role of government regulation is absolutely _not_ to provide a single market. (I.e., do _not_ normalize the laws across all jurisdictions.) That made sense when the economies of scale truly applied - it took a lot of money to build a steel mill. But economies of scale now are primarily tools of capitalist domination. If a large company is truly more competive than small companies, then this should be the case across many jurisdictions with differing local rules. Normalizing the rules across jurisdictions is unfairly (IMHO) handicapping smaller businesses, which as it happens often have lower unit costs these days than large companies. Case in point - labor productivity at a MacDonald's franchise is substantially _lower_ than at the old mom and pop hamburger joint - this is due to two things - MacDonald's already made your burger so it's faster, and every MacDonald's burger is the same - no guessing. But both of those are obsolete criteria in today's world of freely available information.

At one time, the number of jurisdictions was large, and the information flow between them was relatively slow, so this was not such a large problem. But now we are close to having a single global economic model. This puts the entire economic system at constant risk - e.g. "Too big to fail". This idea is in itself a condemnation of the legal structure we have allowed to develop. And now with the availability of incredibly fast means to rationalize markets, that legal structure is, oddly enough, a bad idea. Today we need more diverse markets, not more similar markets. And that is where the political factor comes in. Or, as I've said to many of my friends, "All decisions should be made as locally as feasible," - whether economic or political.

Re:Ha ha ha

[Anonymous Coward]

Marx is more relevant than ever. ... Like Lenin taught us ...

Odd. I thought the half century of history I've just lived through had proved Marx correct and Lenin wrong (at least on those issues where they disagreed).

Re:Ha ha ha

[Anonymous Coward]

In practice, no communist government has resulted in 'free people', except in the sense (as an old Soviet joke goes), "we are free - to work ourselves to death"

From what I hear, Soviet workers didn't actually work all that hard, especially during the later years of the regime. It was more like "we'll pretend to work, and you'll pretend to pay us" (the latter being a jab towards the low salary most Soviet citizens received - apologies for explaining the joke). Living conditions were relatively equal(ly bad).

Capitalism, on the other hand, embodies the freedom to work oneself to death fairly well. Left unchecked, some companies have a way of imposing both hours and conditions that are entirely unreasonable and even deadly. Those also happen to be the same companies where it's difficult to say "no, I'm only working 10 rather than 14 hours today," or "no, I'm not painting those asbestos with lead paint."

Personally, I think a balance is ideal. You correctly noticed how a communist society will tear itself apart, but a capitalist society will similarly tear itself apart without possessing various safety nets and other socialist aspects. People need the freedom to innovate in terms of business, but they also shouldn't be going hungry if they made mistakes in their life, otherwise only the rich can innovate and society stagnates. As a society, we produce enough that the purpose of money should be for luxury, rather than necessity, aside from some unusually expensive-to-treat medical conditions (nature happens).

Re:Ha ha ha

[shadowofwind]

From my own studies of free enterprise as a CAS, it appears to me that if any company controls more than perhaps 20% of a market, or if fewer than 10 or so companies constitute a large percentage of a market, they have effectively too much monopoly power.

And yet, in almost every market, we see one or two companies dominating more than half the market. By your analysis that's way, way too much monopolistic power, and it's the norm. Not very much negative feedback. It seems to me this dynamic has very much in common with communism, even though communism is a purer form so everything goes to hell in a faster and more thorough fashion.

In nature, two species can never survive in exactly the same niche, there has to be something that differentiates them. Oscillations in climate will do it, one species gets the upper hand for a while, then the other, and its stable. (This is like how its easier to balance a pole on your finger if you move you finger randomly back and forth - same principle.) Geographic diversity can help too, and animals can survive in the same fixed locality in slightly different niches that overlap. But within a particular locality, one species always dominates a particular niche. The same dynamics apply to companies. Very quickly things move towards something close to monopoly. Just a moderate amount of regulation isn't enough to fix that. And a large amount of regulation obviously isn't going to fix it either when the political system is corrupted by the same dynamics.

Re:Ha ha ha

[Anonymous Coward]

I was only 14 when I did a comparative analysis of communism and capitalism ... I was able to demonstrate that communism is always doomed, because it is not a stable economic system ... The classic aphorism of communism is "too each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities". This is essentially two uncoupled, undamped systems with unlimited response - some people have "unlimited needs" and work the system; other people will be worked to death.

Wow, not only did you prove that communism is always doomed, you proved that FOSS does not exist ... Oh yeah, 'communism of the rich' ... right!

Re:Ha ha ha

[renoX]

Huh, sorry but I think that your "analysis" was worthless: there is a big difference between communist theory and communism-applied-in-the-real-world: there is the same difference between capitalism in theory and capitalism in the real world..

Re:Ha ha ha

[NoImNotNineVolt]

So regardless of capitalism, communism is a dead end, and makes no mathematical, much less economic, sense. There is a kind of 'communism of the rich' which is analogous to what techies do with open source, and what Star Trek assumed due to the Replicator technology. It's basically, "to each according to his needs, there's plenty to go around."

Indeed, so you've identified a particular scenario in which communism can work. If supply greatly outpaces demand, it makes sense.

Now, in this "rich" scenario, how does capitalism work out? And isn't automation technology bringing us ever closer to this "rich" scenario?

Re:Ha ha ha

[garyebickford]

And yet, in almost every market, we see one or two companies dominating more than half the market. By your analysis that's way, way too much monopolistic power, and it's the norm.

IMHO (I haven't done the rigorous analysis, but based on what work I have done) this is an example of the failure of regulation, or (equivalently) a failed legal structure for the modern context. For the last 100+ years, most legal structures have encouraged monopoly or near-monopoly, often justified by the assumed greater efficiencies that could, and admittedly did, greatly improve our standards of living. Certainly the cars we drive today and most products and services benefit from mass production. This was definitely justifiable by the need for mile-long steel mills of the first half of the 20th century. Even when car production of a single company exceeded the possible capacity of single plants, and plants began to be placed throughout the world, there was still some justification for a General Motors from a production point of view as they could use a single design and mold-making capability and distribute it across many plants. But now that can be done without being within a single corporate structure.

But for at least 20 years, perhaps 50 years, the drive for bigness has been for financial leverage, not production efficiency. That leverage encourages, and needs, the ecosystem to be the same everywhere in order to outcompete the local niche players. Which goes right to your second point, which I agree with completely, and which is why it is important to my mind to reverse the drive to normalize legal and economic structures everywhere - its primary effect is to drive local players out of the ecosystem.

With today's ubiquitous capacity for information transfer, and also 3D printing, I think small and local (two different things, but related) entities have an opportunity to make the mega corporations obsolete. The RIAA and MPAA legal fights may be examples of the dying gasps of obsolete economic structures. In sum, I think the ecosystem has just been changed. Will GM sue to prevent others from using 3D printing to replicate a tail light lens to replace a broken one from a 1967 Camaro?

Re:Ha ha ha

[garyebickford]

Of course there is, but the differences are outcomes of the isms. (One of my former sigs was "Your -ism is wrong" - every '-ism' is essentially an attempt to impose a rational formal structure on living systems, which are inherently arational. That doesn't make the analysis worthless, but demonstrates the relative benefit of a free enterprise system (which I agree is related to, but not quite the same as, a capitalist system. I should be more clear on that distinction and use the former instead. My bad - I tend to equate the two). A free enterprise system, as a complex adaptive system in itself, will always tend to converge toward the most 'efficient' or 'minimal error' surface in the ecosystem.

One of the more telling examples is the rise of black markets in every instance of a communist or socialist system. This is free enterprise, adapting in a variety of ways, to the ecosystem. Black markets are the economic equivalent of weeds in the pavement, or weeds in the wheat field if you prefer.

Re:Ha ha ha

[garyebickford]

I, and others, would argue that this scenario is both post-communist and post-capitalist (at least locally - who built the space ship?) both systems in the formal sense are attempts to impose a rational method of managing scarcity within an arational ecosystem. But I might argue that free enterprise, which is itself a complex adaptive system, will continue to be relevant as it adapts to this new ecosystem.

Automation may not be the correct term - the combination of ubiquitous information and 3D printing are going to take us in that direction but it's not automation in the classic sense. (As a space advocate, I'll also point that some pretty good analysis seems to demonstrate the space development has the potential to improve the world standard of living by a factor of 10 over the next 100 years. So add that into the puzzle.)

I'm presently reading "Accellerando" which is a fascinating SF book that goes from Slashdot to posthumanism, and among other things takes money, described as a 2nd derivative of a linear demand function, to an object-relational complex that incorporates all aspects of a transaction, and proposes Economics 2.0. It's a free E-Book.

Re:Ha ha ha

[romons]

Ironically to your thesis, Marx considered capitalism unstable. In fact, Marx's dialectical economics considers ALL economic systems unstable, and subject to destruction from forces arising within. His predicted 'revolution' actually happened in the 20th century in the west, and was either co-opted by the Nazis in Germany, or folded back into western society in the form of labor unions. The Nazis and Fascists were socialists, but they were national socialists, in contrast to Russia. The fact that they were taken over by monsters who also believed in racial cleansing was unfortunate; they were actually playing out forces that Marx predicted. The west took them on and smashed them to a pulp, and then moved on the soviets in the form of the cold war. This was the real war of capitalism vs socialism. As a result, Russia and China now have a sort of synthesis of capitalism and socialism. The west also has socialist institutions everywhere, mostly a left over of the great depression, which one could say was a pivotal time for capitalism. Marx was predicting this sort of merger would happen.

Because of the changes that have happened since Marx, the capitalists of 1900 would reject the idea that western society is a capitalist society. They would probably consider it a socialist state. Marx, seeing our society, might have said that western society is being maintained in an unstable equilibrium where communistic impulses in the society are suppressed by a combination of propaganda, bribery, and force. He would have been right.

Re:Ha ha ha

[perceptual.cyclotron]

A free enterprise system, as a complex adaptive system in itself, will always tend to converge toward the most 'efficient' or 'minimal error' surface in the ecosystem.

This is all well and good in pre-specified / full-information systems, where both the space of potentials and the utility surface are known. The real world isn't very much like that. Given your CAS and Sante Fe leanings, you've surely read Kauffman. Adaptive systems, under real-world constraints, are generally poised-criticality systems. i.e., they balance centralized and parallelized processes. This is, perhaps, what you mean by needing both positive and negative feedbacks, but it's quite a stretch to call such a system 'capitalism'.

Modellers have the best of intentions, and often produce valuable insights on limit case invariants, but there's a routine overreach when these conclusions are exported back to the real world from which the original enormous simplifications were derived. Setting out to model 'capitalism' or 'socialism' is a noble effort – but it's a mistake to then say that your model is capitalism or socialism. It's merely an example of how a system might behave under the constraints you've chosen as emblematic of those systems. In the framework of policy discussions, this a dangerous thing to do – because even if the limitations and technical details are known and clear to you, the modeller, the consumers of your work will falsely assume that your conclusions relate to 'capitalism' or 'socialism' in the world, which cannot be disentangled from politics, religion, failures (or adaptive heuristics, if you prefer) in human reasoning, chance resource inhomogeneities, noisy and incomplete information, inability to predict future innovations and uses (and consequently an increasing error in estimating the utility surface for increasing time horizons), etc., etc.

That said, communism in most of its theoretical forms is definitely not a better idea – and indeed, numerous socialist theorists, even prior to the rise of the USSR, warned as much. Communism was correctly predicted by socialist thinkers to lead to a red 'bureaucracy' that would utterly fail to bring about any of the advantages of socialist and collectivist societies. However, I'd quibble on the language of 'instability'. If anything, the biggest flaw in centralized schemes is too much stability – i.e., a grinding stagnation even in the face of changing circumstances, and a piling on of compounding errors and inefficiencies. To be sure, this is a recipe for disaster, but it's not really instability so much as hyper-stability, or a 'crystallization' (in Kauffman's language) – a shrinking volume of the accessible state-space with a growing energy barrier, so that the system is doomed to simply break or short-circuit when the external forcings inevitably change too much...

Re:Ha ha ha

[garyebickford]

One of the classic questions in systems philosophy is, when we talk about a system, are we talking about the system or a model of the system? (There's a term for this, I'm not expressing this correctly, it's been a while since I bandied this phraseology around, but hey.) Both are true, and yet both are false depending on your perspective at the moment. I think it was someone at Santa Fe who originally described the term complex adaptive system as a "euphemism for life" - real, messy, adaptive life. In most cases I tend to prefer to view a system as the thing itself, which I may be modeling.

The point of both positive and negative feedbacks being required for any stable system is true of all dynamic systems.

The question of where the boundaries of a system are is also dependent on the question being asked.

Whether capitalism or communism, or any other ism, IMHO "Your -ism is wrong". All -isms (even this one? :) ) are attempts to constrain some aspect of the real world into a rational, or (worse) logical, system. The real world, especially living part of it, just doesn't do that - it's fundamentally a-rational (at least the social and life components). But a CAS tends to converge toward a maximum benefit or minimum error for all environmental inputs perceived by the CAS - that's what life does. In this case, the error surface is in a space of an almost arbitrary dimensions, with dimensions appearing and disappearing continuously. So I'm arguing for the case that the CAS in question _is_ the economy & polity, not a model of it - though we certainly can construct models of it.

I was not calling the CAS capitalism, but the converse. I was referring to capitalism (really free enterprise - I'll stipulate that capitalism is just one model of free enterprise) as a less-bad model of the CAS that constitutes an economy (or a market, or whatnot) than communism. :) 'Free enterprise' a is really a better term than capitalism for this CAS viewpoint. As you note, an economy both does and doesn't contain all those influences you mention, depending on perspective. And that is why capitalism and communism both are not very good models (although the concept of satisficing which broadens the perspective regarding value, and the notion that free enterprise is a CAS, help a lot for the free enterprise case).

So, by way of agreement with your last paragraph, capitalism will tend to be 'successful' to the extent that it successfuly models a CAS. IMHO the fundamental failure of communism (as demonstrated by the simple lack of necessary feedback) is that its entire direction is the opposite direction from a CAS.

One might complain that in a pure free enterprise system, "It's a jungle out there!". And that's mostly OK, with some constraints. A jungle makes optimum use of every resource available, and also responds dynamically and rapidly to every change in the environment. I think organic gardening makes a pretty good analogic approach to how to manage an economy/polity - don't spray every bug you see, but encourage the things you want by proper provision of what they need.

Re:Ha ha ha

[maple_shaft]

I must say that while I don't consider myself sympathetic to Libertarian ideals, I find your thoughts, experiments and models very intriguing. Thank you for sharing this. As someone who is trapped in the corporate rigamarole for family and financial reasons I found your comparison of communistic centrally planned economies to corporate processes and organization and the shared dysfunctions to be enlightening.

I must also say that I agree with your assessments of the failings of our modern capitalist system and how governmental policies foster monopolies. A market based system with tougher anti-trust regulations could be a potential solution for this and one I would get behind.

On the whole however, it is not logic that makes me skeptical of this as a long term solution but my lack of faith in human nature that such a system could remain uncorrupted. Human nature is such that we present gradual entropy into such a system until it decays into corruption and dysfunction. While human beings as a class will present ignorance, greed, corruption and decay, it is certainly a safer and easier task to find a strong, intelligent, benevolent leader that can achieve all of the goals of the complex system.

Competent totalitarianism I feel is the best that human beings can hope to achieve in a world before post-scarcity. There are a number of such examples throughout history where centrally planned leadership when competent can be HIGHLY effective. Robert E. Lee and his outnumbered, outgunned army nearly winning a statistically unwinnable war. Alexander the Great, a near child, leading less than 50k phalanxes and conquering most of the known world. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt engineering and building a monumental tomb that stands to this day. The United States sending a group of men to the Moon and back.

If such an exceptional authoritarian figure had supreme power and wealth then they would be uncorruptable as there is nothing any of their subjects would have to offer them. They would be an exceptional statesmen or even an exceptional economist out of the passion of the craft. This I believe is the only hope for humanity since there is a statistical percentage if such a person were chosen at random from a pool of competent peoples to fill that role then there is a statistical liklihood that this person might be a huge success and advance humanity. Compare this to the statistical liklihood that a well regulated free market system will eventually erode into corruption, monopolistic control and entropy, 100% of the time according to human history. Only a neo-monarchy can save us.

Re:Ha ha ha

[kermidge]

Not sure small and local can overcome the present situation, but one can hope. The back of the envelope thing re monopoly ownership is intriguing as well.

By weird association, reminds me of going to a dentist mid-'70s or so and reading an article on old man Honda (Soichiro Honda). Two things stood out. He'd go around to dealerships dressed in old khaki slacks, loafers, and a ratty sweatshirt to see how he got treated. Second, he decided that the owner of a company should not make more than 100 times the pay of the lowest employee. (As for the dentist, I hoped he was a better investor than tooth doctor.)

Re:Ha ha ha

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is essentially two uncoupled, undamped systems with unlimited response - some people have "unlimited needs" and work the system; other people will be worked to death."

We have that in capitalism, the rich have "unlimited needs" and everyone else must work to meet them

Re:Ha ha ha

[cold fjord]

Under communism there will be free people.

Quite so, they will be free from liberty, free from plenty, free from democracy, free from justice. It will be just like pretty much every other communist country.

To get to communism we need to free the workers and put the capitalists under the workers dictatorship.

Communist "workers" dictatorships have been a bloody mess resulting in poverty and oppression pretty much everywhere they've been in power. Communism killed 100,000,000 people in the last century.

In the US, the last group that seriously pursued that goal had a similar plan in mind. You may want to pay special attention to the very bottom section of the page under "Additional links."

Perhaps you mean well, or perhaps this is simply your preferred troll, but if you are serious, you should look into this book: The Black Book of Communism - Review

Dousing rods

[benjfowler]

Some fraudster in the UK went down recently for selling dousing rods as bomb detectors to the Iraqis. There were quite a few people credulous twits in the media who went after skeptics who were against this transparent ripoff, but it took a good ten years for enough momentum to build, to get this investigated, and for the criminal who ran this, to get charged with anything.

As far as I can tell, polygraphy is just as full of woo as phrenology, and it was invented roughly around the same time. I do wonder how long it'll take for the stupidity to be debunked sufficiently hard, for the public outcry to overcome the True Believers and have this snake oil abolished?

Re:Dousing rods

[Deadstick]

selling dousing rods as bomb detectors

So they're supposed to detect bombs by spraying water?

Re:Dousing rods

[M1FCJ]

The problem with the dousing rod bomb detectors were not because they were shite, they were accepted by the UK Gov as legitimate, making it a political problem as well as a technical & ethical problem. The bastard selling them was an ex-Met police officer, had connections and even though anyone with two brain cells and a technical background could clearly say they were fake, they managed to catch the bombs roughly 50% of the time. Of course, if you flip a coin you'll get it 50% of the time but for people who don't understand probability, this sounds like a very high catch rate. The alarming reports have been around for years and years but it took a BBC documentary for people to wake up and pay attention.

Any politician who had authorized the purchase of the fake systems were just too corrupt to accept they made a huge cockup. I wonder how much money was paid in bribes, worldwide.

Re:Dousing rods

[sjames]

Dowsing rods do sorta work. They work by giving the user 'permission' to acknowledge their gut feeling that comes from minute observations they aren't consciously aware of.

However, this was a scam since a few cents worth of bailing wire can do that and this clown was charging 'thousands' and adding worthless fake circuitry.

Re:Dousing rods

[runeghost]

But the nice Americans bringing you "democracy" (and billions in cash) might get upset if you stop and arrest people for reasons like: being from the wrong ethnicity, being a woman, failing to pay a bribe, having some good loot, etc. But if you stop and arrest people "because the $1000 detect-o-tron detected explosive residue" the Americans will smile and nod and keep handing out cash.

Re:Dousing rods

[Anonymous Coward]

is just as full of woo as phrenology

Yes, but retro-phrenology is known to work. I have lost count of the amount os people whose attitudes towards me i have changed, simply by chaging the shape of their skull through blunt force trauma.

video on how pass one

[Joe_Dragon]

http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/138896/liar-liar.jhtml

what about

[Anonymous Coward]

Those self made multimillionaires such as myself? While you dumbasses were playing COD in your mom's basement, and decided how retarded you were going to be going forward, others were dedicating their entire existence to ideas and the execution of success.

Yeah, I think I'll keep my capitalism and let you debt slaves who refuse to contribute anything to society - but still demand your god-given handout - keep complaining about how you've been 'screwed by the system'.

Marxists - jealous bastards sitting in their parent's basement complaining about successful hard working people since the 1850's .

Re: what about

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like someone just finished a copy of Atlas Shrugged is feeling smug. Dont let your mom catch you on the internet before your homework is done.

Re: what about

[Sique]

My standard answer on Atlas Shrugged is the end of Douglas Adams' second Hitchhiker novel (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe), where Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect meet the people from Golgafrincham. Those people are the leftovers when the elite on Golgafrincham turned their planet into an Randian paradise, with the econonomical elite ruling without bounds, and an army of slave like serfs are working for them.

In the end, only the leftovers, the seemingly superfluous, tedious people, involved in regulations, law enforcement and taxing, the people Dent and Prefect met, survive, and are able to found a new civilisation on Earth, while the Randian Golgafrincham dies out due to an infection.

Re:what about

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat the rich!!!

You're dinner, Bitch!

And I think I'll buy desert with food stamps.

In a democracy the 1% will eventually lose everything.

Re:what about

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh look, an Internet Rich Guy. About as impressive and believable as an Internet Tough Guy.

Re:what about

[Opportunist]

What makes you think you're in any way relevant just because you amass money?

If you're looking for someone with a misplaced feeling of entitlement, look for a mirror.

Re:what about

[Anonymous Coward]

Marxists - jealous bastards sitting in their parent's basement complaining about successful hard working people since the 1850's .

I work harder than you. I have worked harder than you. I will always work harder than you. I'm one of the poorest in my nation, yet I work harder than most of the multimillionaires.

Hard work doesn't make you rich.

Also, food for thought: the police (who work harder than you and make much less than you) are the ones who prevent the hard working poor from taking everything you have, at gun point.

Re: what about

[garyebickford]

My reply to both you and the parent is that IMHO most people (including Greenspan, and all of Wall Street) misinterpret Rand. If you recall, the protagonists in each of her books is a builder, not a financier. They were virulently opposed to those who used manipulation of the economic and political system for their own gains. Her books were really about the importance of the creative and technical versus the political.

I think it was Nietzche ("Man and Superman"?) who proposed the dichotomy between masters and slaves. I have always felt that he was wrong, that while those two groups may exist, there is a third group, the technical/creative, who does not want to be master and refuses to be slave.

Re: what about

[Rick Zeman]

My standard answer on Atlas Shrugged is the end of Douglas Adams' second Hitchhiker novel (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe), where Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect meet the people from Golgafrincham. Those people are the leftovers when the elite on Golgafrincham turned their planet into an Randian paradise, with the econonomical elite ruling without bounds, and an army of slave like serfs are working for them.

In the end, only the leftovers, the seemingly superfluous, tedious people, involved in regulations, law enforcement and taxing, the people Dent and Prefect met, survive, and are able to found a new civilisation on Earth, while the Randian Golgafrincham dies out due to an infection.

Just remember one thing about Atlas Shrugged: As mentioned in the preface, it's not about men as they are, it's men as they should be. We don't have any morality and ethics in business or government: In other words, instead of a Midas Mulligan we have a Jamie Dimon, instead of a John Galt we have John Boehner, instead of a Hugh Akston we have Twitter....

Re: what about

[dbIII]

misinterpret Rand

They've probably made a pretty good effort at working out what a recent immigrant from soviet Russia living on US welfare thought was wrong with the USA.
I really don't get this Rand thing. Maybe it's because some see it as a kind of home grown "wisdom" and see everything else as tainted by some form of education.

Re: what about

[Sique]

I don't misinterpret Ayn Rand. I just don't believe into the "great men" myth. There have been big names, for sure. But none of them would have been big all alone. There are no selfmade millionaires. If you look closely, they either had large teams of people at their hands, or a chain of chance played into their hands. James Watt would just have been a quite gifted instrument maker at the University of Glasgow without John Roebuck and Matthew Boulton. And he wouldn't have become an instrument maker in the first place without his father being a teacher of mathematics.

And the big railroad barons of the second half of the 19th century never would have been that big without the U.S. government financing and pre-planning the big railroad tracks and protecting the building sites with the cavalry. So much for Ayn Rand's preposition of Atlas Shrugged. The archetypes of Dagny Taggart were free-riding on government subsidaries.

Re: what about

[Sique]

So that's what you get, when you talk about an idealized environment: spheric cows in a vacuum. ;)

Instead we have to deal with reality. And reality is everything that affects us. We are not spheric cows, and we don't live in a vacuum. And you don't get far in reality by trying to breed milk providing balls.

Re: what about

[garyebickford]

The romance of the creator having to deal with the political realities. In our own minds, we are all Mozart, Tesla, and John Galt. :)

Re: what about

[garyebickford]

You make a useful point - through most of US, if not global, history, there has been the thread of the creative, explorer, or pioneer who probably has support from investors, governments, other parties, etc. Columbus is perhaps an archetypical example - he spent something like 10 years trying to get various monarchs (Portugal, Spain, England, maybe even Italy) to fund his expedition to go West to find the East. (He was rejected several times by Isabella and Ferdinand because their advisers pointed out that his estimate of the diameter of the Earth was about 1/2 what the experts thought - they were in fact correct!) More recently, the American pioneers, and the American railroads, depended on government land grants.

Nevertheless there is a difference. All of your examples fit the mold of people who, given or finding an advantage, ran with it and created something new, or had a dream and put together the resources to make it happen. Without Columbus, Spain would not have become such a major economic and political power - it had just essentially given up rights to most of Africa and the South Atlantic to the Portuguese after a military defeat. In fact, Ferdinand and Isabella were acting as VCs, with the expectation that they would never see Columbus again, but their situation was bad enough that it was worth trying this low-cost fling. It worked out pretty well (except arguably for the folks who lived here already...)

Lots of other people had fathers who taught mathematics; lots of people have had all the right tools but never did anything with them. Heck, I'm a pretty good example - back in 1981 I came up with the idea of 3D printing (I worked in a group that built flatbed printers), and I even assembled some of the components I needed to build a prototype. But I never carried through with it. Maybe that was partly luck, and/or going a different direction, or whatever - but the fact remains that I could have created the 3D printing market 30 years ago.

IMHO Obama's assertion that "you didn't build that" was IMHO a combination of economic illiteracy, stupidity, socialist idealism, and political "big lie" technique. Sure, every "great man" has a variety of supports that made it possible. But that does not counter the principle. Taken to its extreme, you can say that Columbus was no more important than the guy who baked his breakfast the morning he left Palos de la Frontera.

Re: what about

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a question about a guy I know, and your opinion on "men as they should be" with regard to him.

Basically, he spends his life doing nothing. Won't work at all. Not only that, he spends most of his time talking his friends into joining in with his no-work lifestyle. Oddly, he not only is unapologetic about this, but holds it out as some kind of personal superiority. Same attitude, same inertia, year after year with this guy. Occasionally he alludes to something "big" that's supposed to happen that will justify all of his behavior.

What's your moral opinion of this guy, from the perspective of Objectivist ethics? Is he, maybe, an immoral "moocher" parasite, or is he the highest expression of the human ideal, personified? By the way, I'm not specifying for the purposes of the question whether or not his first name is "John".

I'm beginning to think that his whole outlook is just one of posturing and psychological projection, where it makes no difference what he actually accomplished, or by what means he did it, but rather it's simply a means to "tack on" a projection of moral superiority regardless of his work or contributing circumstances. As it turns out, this also seems to be a particularly appealing thing for the wealthy to add to their sense of ego, regardless of how they got their wealth or any actual historical correspondence to any principles.

What do you think? How should I take this guy? I mean, real talk, not abstract hypothetical talk, here.

Re: what about

[tragedy]

There are no selfmade millionaires.

To be fair, a millionaire isn't a big deal any more. Most working professionals should expect to be a millionaire by retirement these days unless something goes wrong.

Re: what about

[mosb1000]

I hear this a lot. People tell me "everyone has to work" but what they really mean is everyone must have a job. And what they really, really mean is "I think I have to have a job, so in order for that to be fair you need one too." No, not everyone should have a job. And just because someone isn't willing to work for someone else doesn't mean they are a slacker. Take Steve Jobs as an example. He quite is job to start Apple Computer. Does that make him a slacker? Of course not. In reality, if you have an idea like that you should probably do the same. The world would be a better place if more people did.

Re: what about

[Vecna!]

That guy should be crucified.

Re: what about

[RazorSharp]

My reply to both you and the parent is that IMHO most people (including Greenspan

That would be strange considering that she consulted Greenspan when writing Atlas Shrugged and they were good friends.

Although the book vehemently treats all politicians as scum, Rand herself rallied behind certain Republican politicians. In the dystopic Atlas Shrugged the 'collectivists' have already taken over the entire government and it's too late for the 'individuals' to do anything about it. If anything the book is a rallying cry for ultra-conservatives to become more involved in government to save it from the FDR-type liberals that Rand saw as incompetent tyrants who had taken over.

there is a third group

And there's a fourth group and a fifth group and so on. However, I don't believe that the difference Nietzsche's Man and Superman is that between master and slave. My interpretation was that it's more akin to the difference between animal and man. Like how there's a difference between spiders and cats. Spiders are somewhat like automatons -- they do what they do almost purely based on cause and effect. Cats, on the other hand, make good pets because they are closer to man's mental capacity -- even though they sometimes act purely upon cause/effect type stimuli (such as play with string), they also seem to somewhat have a will of their own and they are emotional creatures. Regardless, they have nowhere near the logical capacity as man.

If I understand Nietzsche correctly (which I admit is questionable), then the Superman is a man who lives up to his mental potential. Many people live their entire lives without even attempting to take advantage of their potential -- like animals they can be satisfied with mere carnal pleasure and they only use their mental potential to increase this carnal pleasure. Nietzsche asserts that we ought to esteem to be something greater than what we tend to be; in our ambitions, morals, and our ability to reason.

Re: what about

[Bob9113]

Just remember one thing about Atlas Shrugged: As mentioned in the preface, it's not about men as they are, it's men as they should be.

Interesting -- seems like under the premise "men as they should be", everything from pure socialism to pure laissez-faire, or from pure anarchy to pure autarchy, would work. Any system works if the actors are perfectly informed and benevolent.

Re: what about

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to discount your points, but most responses to my post are likely to be a big "whoosh" unless you are quite familiar with Ayn Rand and her views.

I fed her philosophical tapeworm back on itself with my question. Most Objectivists aren't prepared to handle such questions from other (ex) Objectivists. ;)

Re: what about

[Anonymous Coward]

I tell you. Guy won't even do any carpentry.

Re: what about

[garyebickford]

Greenspan was often called her disciple in the 1960s, but IMHO he made an error when he moved into the financial world and tried to use his version of objectivism to manage the Fed, and the Wall Streeters. He later admitted he was wrong. Except for the impact of technological advances (such as high speed trading, and other innovations), most of Wall Street is as close to a zero sum game as any part of business, and the motivations are not creative but manipulative.

It's hard to correlate conservatism (ultra or otherwise) with objectivism, because the meaning of both conservatism and (US) liberalism continually changes.

I think the master and slave notion is right from the book - your analogy of animal and man is collinear with that so I don't disagree - but it's been about 40 years, so who knows? :) Certainly one of the apparently key requirements for slaveholders to maintain their self-image is to categorize their slaves as subhuman. To me this smacks of a weird rationalization. (Suggestion - read "Making Whiteness" - fascinating analysis of the psychosocial history of the post-Civil war South and its impact on the rest of the nation.)

Re: what about

[Zaelath]

IMHO Obama's assertion that "you didn't build that" was IMHO a combination of economic illiteracy, stupidity, socialist idealism, and political "big lie" technique.

You make a rational, reasoned argument, then sign off with that straw man? I'm guessing you're not even taking it out of context like the GOP tried to.

The "you didn't build that" was *directly* related to the infrastructure of an entire society that enables advancement, and the idea that you contribute back to that society, in the form of jobs (like Apple doesn't), or taxes (like Apple doesn't).

I'm not saying Obama didn't fail miserably to express the sentiment clearly, but there's no "great man" that doesn't owe anything to anyone.

Re: what about

[aldousd666]

Those large teams of people were hired and paid by them, receiving more than their own talents procure alone without having someone to pay them for them. So yes, while 'self-made' men require paying an army to work for them, any one 'soldier' in the army receives a bonus for the boss having assembled it, and included them in it.

Re: what about

[mosb1000]

I'm not an objectivist by any means, but I am familiar enough with Atlas Shrugged to know what you were trying to say. Obviously, I disagree.

Re: what about

[VortexCortex]

the dichotomy between masters and slaves. I have always felt that he was wrong, that while those two groups may exist, there is a third group, the technical/creative, who does not want to be master and refuses to be slave.

As a Cyberneticist I disagree. They are all one in the same, each in different phases of existence. The master is a slave to duty. The Slave can be a master manipulator who "tops from the bottom" as they say. The dedicated and zealous creator is as the builder who labored to make great things, slaves to their evolutionarily emerged instinct to to create and explore, serving as mere slaves to the overarching master of complexity progression itself -- Without which we would have succumb in totality to entropy long ago. Everything Flows. Without chaos there could be no mutation, no progress, only crystals.

You widen your eyes: Your view is a slice of a given complexity level, slice higher and you'll find information theory describing the process whereby racial prejudice and greed are genetically beneficial -- Then you will realize why humans have nearly stopped evolving; Slice again and you may cogitate upon the emergence of complexity itself, realize the function of all life carrying out in all things, even your machines, and come to know your culture as a living entity; Yourself as a mere neuron in the network of neural network networks; The earth our body, the stars our home. At another level you'll find you don't even exist as a singular entity: You have ameobas as blood and serve as host to the digestive bacteria colonies that dictate whether you'll be fat or thin, diabetic or not -- A walking virus pustule, living only to infect others with pathogens and ideas, or to further the infection for others.

Peer deep down into the chaotic and uncertain quantum world and realize you exist at your size because it is the scale where enough complexity can first pool to form such reflective thoughts. Do NOT remain trapped in this layer of cognition -- At the eye level, where all appearances are most deceptive and of which you only appear to know best. You ignorantly thumb your nose at one group dichotomy while glibly defining another.

Mr. Bickford, it's time to grow Up.

Re: what about

[sjames]

I'll bet Columbus wouldn't have discovered a damned thing if he had to swim to America. The ship builders were pretty important. His crew was pretty important.

It truth, Columbus had a great deal of luck to thank for even surviving his voyage. Had the new world not been there he'd have starved with his crew before reaching India.

Re: what about

[mysidia]

I'm not saying Obama didn't fail miserably to express the sentiment clearly, but there's no "great man" that doesn't owe anything to anyone.

Every person owes a contribution back to society.

But no "great man" owes back to society more, just because his creation turned out to be more valuable, and he was more successful in the marketplace.

Apple did contribute back to that society, by providing technology.

Apple doesn't owe taxes back to society; not at the rate that taxes are charged, anyways. Taxes are nothing more than immoral, but legalized thievery.

Apple doesn't owe jobs to society. Jobs are a resource for creators, that some but not all companies require large numbers of.

Apple's creations and technology are reward enough for society. The payment for these products is the creator's fair economic incentive.

Seeking extra "taxes" or "jobs"; in greater amounts from creators, is just a form of unfair rent-seeking created by greed.

Re: what about

[dbIII]

I agree with your Master/slave catagorisation - I've always seen that as a very childish way of looking at the world. Plenty who want to be master are really just looking for a mother to wipe their bottoms for them instead of dealing with the world themselves.

Re: what about

[Zaelath]

That's not an argument, that's a philosophy.

Re: what about

[N1AK]

The ship builders were pretty important.

And will have been paid to build the ship ;) of course the point you're making is still valid, nobody is entirely responsible for their own achievements. The issue is that there seems to be a focus on the two extremes a) That 'great men' exist or b) that society is the cause of everyone's achievements. I strongly believe that the truth is, as is usually the case, somewhere in between: Luck, society and the influence of others play a huge part in the story of any 'great person' but their decisions and actions are what turned opportunity into reality. Trying to dismiss either sides of the equation does society no good.

Re: what about

[N1AK]

Taxes are nothing more than immoral, but legalized thievery.

Nonsense. An American who doesn't like the tax rules in America would find it trivially easy to migrate to another country with different rules. You can't credibly choose to abide in a country, create a company in that country and use the infrastructure of that country then claim it is theft when you are asked to pay the taxes that they require.

But no "great man" owes back to society more, just because his creation turned out to be more valuable,

There is an idea, the name of which I cannot recall now, based on just this. If you asked a rich person, a poor person, a white person, a woman or a catholic to write the rules, laws and taxes then what you'd end up with would probably be something that suits them better than it suits other demographics. If you asked someone to write the rules without knowing who they would be (obviously a thought experiment) then they'd want to ensure that the disabled, people from impoverished families etc were assisted (in case they ended up being in that group) and would be happy to risk sacrificing some income if they turned out to be from a well connected, wealthy family with a high chance of earning a large income.

Re: what about

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the ship builders would have been paid for their work. But whose money paid them? It certainly wasn't Columbus' money.

Re: what about

[Anonymous Coward]

"An American who doesn't like the tax rules in America would find it trivially easy to migrate to another country with different rules. . ."

Your statement is factually incorrect.

The US government requires all citizens to pay taxes regardless of where they live. If I moved to Whereverland, I would need to petition the government to accept a renunciation of my citizenship before they would accept t I was no longer liable for taxes on income earned, and spent, entirely outside the continent. They accept only a handful of these petitions (less than 1000) every year. The process is not "trivially easy".

Beyond that, ease of migration does not mean something is or isn't theft. "It would have been trivially easy for her to avoid being raped, just. . . ." No.

Re: what about

[dywolf]

if they didnt do it alone, then why arent the ones who helped them also among the greats?

the great men do exist, but their existence does not preclude the existence of those who helped them get there.
likewise the existence or fact of help getting a person there, does not preclude that they were indeed "great men".

Re: what about

[mysidia]

Nonsense. An American who doesn't like the tax rules in America would find it trivially easy to migrate to another country with different rules

An absurd reply. Of course, (1) migration is never easy, AND (2) "You can go somewhere else, if you think you're treated unfairly" is the age old reply of tyrants --- even Adolf Hitler used that excuse.

If you asked someone to write the rules without knowing who they would be (obviously a thought experiment) then they'd want to ensure that the disabled, people from impoverished families etc were assisted

That means nothing, other than that humans are naturally loss-averse, and predisposed towards thievery.

Re: what about

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to renounce your citizenship. No more taxation.

Re:what about

[MTEK]

I think he's referring to the 1st world little shits who squander opportunity, refuse to take responsibility, and project their frustrations in the most pseudo-intellectual way.

Re: what about

[Ihlosi]

(2) "You can go somewhere else, if you think you're treated unfairly" is the age old reply of tyrants --- even Adolf Hitler used that excuse.

Err ... one of the things he did was to make it as hard as possible for the "undesirables" to emigrate - to make it easier to round them up and kill them.

You know you're in a real tyranny if the freedom of just going somewhere else is taken away from you.

Re: what about

[Alien54]

If the Americas were not there, then the climate would have been very much different. Which would have led to a very different alternate history.

Re: what about

[pnutjam]

You are wrong.

Re: what about

[cbolling]

OK, this is a very controversial topic in history and I do not want to come down on one side or another but I do feel that the alternative view needs to be presented:

Are you suggesting that the Americas would not have been discovered without Columbus? Are you saying that if the Portuguese would have discovered it first (like Cabral discovered Brazil in 1500) that Portugal would have had the resources to control and exploit the entire land mass of South America, Central America and the Caribbean? Are you saying that the forces in Spanish society that allowed them to exploit the Americas (conquistadores with nothing to do after the Moors were conquered in Grenada, etc.) would have magically transferred to Portugal or England or France?

Are you suggesting that the steam engine never would have been improved without Watt? Would it have been improved somewhere else? Were the economic and social factors in Great Britain going to be transferred to France or Germany if Watt had died early?

This is a very controversial subject and I do not want to dismiss either side too out of hand. But it is very hard to come up with an example of one individual changing history. An individual might change his own personal history or family history and the history of individuals and families close to that individual but ultimately there was an underlying social, economic, political or artistic environment that had as great or even more influence on the events driving a society to change.

Re: what about

[Shadowmist]

My reply to both you and the parent is that IMHO most people (including Greenspan, and all of Wall Street) misinterpret Rand. If you recall, the protagonists in each of her books is a builder, not a financier. They were virulently opposed to those who used manipulation of the economic and political system for their own gains. .

It was Rand who misinterpreted everyone else. Her entire body of work was borne out of need of revenge for the Bosheviks' treatment of her family. In her books, there are three types of people. The Hero figures from Whom All Blessings Flow, the Evil Parasites who appropriate and misuse those gifts, and the cyphers caught in between. Because the Bosheviks preached the doctrine of We (even if they seldom lived up to it.) Rand responded by a lifelong overcompensation to the doctrine of Me. What she forgets is that building societies has always been a cooperative event. Builders have always relied on others for capital, materials, labor, and transport as well as others scale their dreams to reality when reach exceeds grasp. Without them, they're just madmen staring at pieces of paper. Rand's writings found a ready audience for the selfish because it turns their vice into a virtue. But Galt's little valley of Paradise would founder at the moment someone asked. "Who's going to take care of the plumbing today?" Because no matter how advanced your tech gets, there's always going to be some form of menial work required to keep it running. Something that can't be automated, that will require human dirtwork. What Rand forgets or simply chooses to ignore in her elitism, is that those people matter too.

Re: what about

[Shadowmist]

misinterpret Rand

They've probably made a pretty good effort at working out what a recent immigrant from soviet Russia living on US welfare thought was wrong with the USA. I really don't get this Rand thing. Maybe it's because some see it as a kind of home grown "wisdom" and see everything else as tainted by some form of education.

It's not hard to get. It's selfishness made into a virtue, Individualism glorified to the extreme. Is it really suprising that anything combining those two would find such an audience?

Re: what about

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone missed the point Douglass was making. The Golgafrinchams were not destroyed, the created a ruse to eject the non essential parts of their economy (hair dressers, phone sanitizers, etc...). You only had the B-Ark survivors accounts that Golgafrincham was destroyed and strangely enough none of them agreed on what the threat to the planet was (asteroid, disease, etc...). It has been a while but I do vaguely remember that there was a throw off line about the non B-Ark'ers being wiped out from a bug from a non sanitized phone but that was well after they had ejected the fluff from their economy.

The easiest way to shoot down Atlas Shrugged is to take the thought experiment to its extreme. What happens when John Galt gets old and dies? Shouldn't be any inheritance in that environment as you can't earn an inheritance so kids/wife wouldn't get it. No real government so it shouldn't be confiscated in the form of a death tax. Do they just bury all his gold with him? Or should the undertaker raise his prices such that everyone is taken to zero by the burial expenses? Rand never answered the what next question.

Rand's thought experiment is interesting but would fail very quickly just like any communist Utopia it provides a contrast to.

Re: what about

[jythie]

I think it is less that people misinterpret Rand, and more that they view her fictional works through the lens of her non-fiction writings. When one writes a work of fiction they have complete control over the environment and characters, the ability to bundle behaviors to demonize or elevate based off artificial archetypes. Kinda like Chick Tracs....

Re: what about

[jythie]

'Great Men' benefit far more from society then others, thus I would say yes they owe plenty back. Apple would not have the success it did if not for the society that it exists in, complete with infrastructure, education, and a well paid customer base to support its products.

Thing is, every company kinda hopes that OTHER companies will pay taxes and create jobs, while they minimize their own. It is a race to the bottom and only a certain degree of taxing and regulation keeps corporate america from imploding. Look at any country where the government is completely hands off and you find a complete decimated economy.

Part of the problem is 'creators' often feel a massive sense of entitlement, all the things society owes them but THEY own their own profits.

Re: what about

[garyebickford]

That's really a different topic, though I don't disagree with your assessment. If you haven't already, I suggest reading "Last and First Men" and the associated "Star Maker" by Olaf Stapledon, a friend of Einstein's IIRC.

Someone (Gould?) pointed out that the individual of a species becomes less fit as the species itself becomes more integrated. Civilization certainly has the effect of reducing the relative fitness of the individuals in it. As a case in point, some people are now arguing that human IQ has dropped since we became civilized, and similarly I as an example, might very well not have survived various illnesses and personal 'minor' disabilities without the comforts of civilization - and think about all those folks whose bad teeth have been hidden with orthodontics, to reproduce children with bad teeth.

As someone once said, "we are just mobile apartment houses for germs."

As you allude, every multicellular life form is a complex of individuals that have given up some aspects of their individuality to work together. Civilizations are just the same but exist in information space rather than gene space. And we all together constitute Terran 'Life'. When humans begin to terraform migrate into the Solar System, and if/when we build interstellar seed ships and propagate to other star systems, we will basically be doing the analogous thing to the spores of a fern or a mushroom. The individual lives (human plus all the species of life we bring with us) inside the seedship are just the cells that constitute the living part of the spore.

PS - I looked at your neural net thing, but didn't really get the gist.

Re: what about

[mysidia]

Err ... one of the things he did was to make it as hard as possible for the "undesirables" to emigrate - to make it easier to round them up and kill them.

At one point that was true; before Germany's conquest of Europe though -- the undesirables were encouraged to emigrate away.

What happened with The Ms. St. Louis?

The undesirables in Germany were undesirables elsewhere too; the country tried to send away the undesirables to Cuba, the US, etc... other countries refused them entry; and refused them asylum

It turns out: if you want to leave, you need to have somewhere to go

Re: what about

[mysidia]

Apple would not have the success it did if not for the society that it exists in, complete with infrastructure, education, and a well paid customer base to support its products.

Apple's success is not attributable to these things by any measure. There are plenty of other companies in various businesses, that had all these things, but no success.

every company kinda hopes that OTHER companies will pay taxes and create jobs, while they minimize their own.

Only if they are competitors; the competitor who pays more taxes will fail.

Every company has to minimize their employment costs ----- if you are in the business of selling quarters for nickels, you will go broke pretty fast.

Look at any country where the government is completely hands off and you find a complete decimated economy.

Nonsense. there are more decimated economies where the government was overly hands-on. Economies where the government was completely hands off over long periods of time are among the most successful.

It's the US government being overly hands-on that causes Apple to create fewer US jobs in the first place.

Pesky tax laws and employment regulations cause it to be fiscally irresponsible to not outsource certain jobs overseas.

Re: what about

[Rakarra]

(2) "You can go somewhere else, if you think you're treated unfairly" is the age old reply of tyrants --- even Adolf Hitler used that excuse.
Err ... one of the things he did was to make it as hard as possible for the "undesirables" to emigrate - to make it easier to round them up and kill them.

In the early 30s the Jews were 'encouraged'* to leave voluntarily so as to further Germany's racial purity, such that 57% of the Jewish population had left by the time World War II came around. At that point it was too late and those who hadn't taken the hint (or had no means to leave earlier) became victims of the Holocaust.

"Encouraged" meaning they were forbidden from participating in many public activities, fined for the damage of Krystallnacht, sometimes attacked in public, Jewish businesses shut out of markets, etc.

Re: what about

[Rakarra]

What's your moral opinion of this guy, from the perspective of Objectivist ethics? Is he, maybe, an immoral "moocher" parasite, or is he the highest expression of the human ideal, personified? By the way, I'm not specifying for the purposes of the question whether or not his first name is "John".

This is a very good question, and raises further questions from me, since I'll admit I don't know enough about Objectivist theory to really figure it out. Does the man who cannily takes advantage of someone else's foolish charity acting in accordance with Objectivist principles? He is, after all, acting in his own rational self-interest. My guess, given the Nietzsche talk before, is "maybe," but he should still be pushed aside by the better, productive members of society who remove his ability to be a moocher. In an Objectivist society, he wouldn't be able to mooch.

Re: what about

[shiftless]

There are no selfmade millionaires. If you look closely, they either had large teams of people at their hands, or a chain of chance played into their hands.

Right. Explain Henry Ford.

And the big railroad barons of the second half of the 19th century never would have been that big without the U.S. government financing and pre-planning the big railroad tracks and protecting the building sites with the cavalry.

Bullshit. Go look up the "Great Northern Railroad"....then go hang yourself.

Just because the U.S. government started going off the rails with its big government bullshit back in the 1860s and later (thanks to Lincoln) doesn't mean that is the only way to do things.

The archetypes of Dagny Taggart were free-riding on government subsidaries.

And that's what you tell yourself, to soothe your ego, because otherwise you would forced to confront the fact that you are a failure....and will never be anything else, because you're counting on "luck" and "other people helping you" to become great. When was the last railroad or automobile manufacturer YOU created asshole? That's right--you didn't build that and never will.

Confusing

[Anonymous Coward]

typical confusing. the summary leaves me confused.

No thanks!

[For a Free Internet]

A bunch of sub-reformist stalinoid liberal hacks. Marxists oppose gun control.

Re:No thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

The second amendment was penned with the blood of the lower classes. I see that IHBT and you're just another scum-fuck right winger with a micro penis

Re:No thanks!

[Fjandr]

Really? Last I checked, disarming the populace was how the English monarchy retained its stranglehold for as long as it did. The same is true with every other brutal government that has ever existed. Arms are for the elite, not the peons.

Re:No thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

The British monarchy was one of the most liberal in the world at the time and was one of the few to abandon absolutism before the Renaissance.

Damn, I'd better watch out.

[runeghost]

Next thing you know, the Feds will be coming after me for my collection of marked tarot cards, and confiscating my 1st Edition Player's Handbook lest I share my secret spells that prevent scrying via crystal ball.

Slashdotted content (delete when available again)

[davecb]

An Attempted Entrapment
Posted by George Maschke on 3 November 2013, 1:34 pm

In May 2013, I was the target of an attempted entrapment.1 Whether it was a federal agent attempting to entrap me on a contrived material support for terrorism charge or simply an individual’s attempt to embarrass me and discredit AntiPolygraph.org remains unclear. In this post, I will provide a full public accounting of the attempt, including the raw source of communications received and the IP addresses involved.

As background, it should be borne in mind that a federal criminal investigation into providers of information on polygraph countermeasures, dubbed “Operation Lie Busters,” has been underway since at least November 2011, when an undercover U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent, posing as a job applicant, contacted Chad Dixon of Marion, Indiana for help on passing the polygraph. In December, 2012, Dixon pleaded guilty to federal charges of wire fraud and obstruction of an agency proceeding, for which he has been sentenced to 8 months in federal prison.

Doug Williams of Norman, Oklahoma, a former police polygrapher who has been teaching people how to pass polygraph examinations for some three decades and operates the website Polygraph.com, was also the target of a sting operation and in February 2013, U.S. Customs and Border Protection executed search warrants on his home and office, seizing business records. He has been threatened with prosecution but to date has not been charged with any crime.

With this in mind, I received a most curious unsolicited communication on Saturday, 18 May 2013 from <mohammadali201333@yahoo.com>. The message was sent to my AntiPolygraph.org e-mail address <lt;maschke@antipolygraph.org> and was titled “help help help please” (155 kb EML file.) The message body was blank, but there was a PDF attachment with a short message written in Persian, the language of Iran:

I know Persian, a fact of which the writer was evidently cognizant. Here is a translation:

Greetings and respect to you, Mr. George Maschke,

I am Mohammad Aghazadeh and have been living in Iraq for five years. I am a member of an Islamic group that seeks to restore freedom to Iraq. Because the federal police are suspicious of me, they want to do a lie detector test on me. I ask that you send me a copy of your book about the lie behind the lie so that I can use it, or that you help me in any other way. I am very grateful to you.

The book to which the message refers is The Lie Behind the Lie Detector (1 mb PDF), AntiPolygraph.org’s free e-book that, among other things, explains how to pass (or beat) a polygraph “test.” Factors that made me highly suspicious about this message include:

Why would someone who supposedly fears the police send an unencrypted e-mail acknowledging that he’s a member of an Islamic group that is trying to change the government of Iraq?

Why would such a person also provide his full name and how long he’s been in the country?

To my knowledge, there aren’t any Iranian-backed Islamic groups seeking to “restore freedom to Iraq.” In fact, Iran and Iraq have good diplomatic relations.

Why did this person ask me to send a book that is freely available on-line? Note that this message didn’t ask for a “Persian edition” of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector.

I suspected the message was a likely attempt to set me up for prosecution on charges of material support for terrorism (or something similar).2 It seemed highly unlikely that the message could be genuine. Nonetheless, about half an hour after receiving the message, I provided “Mohammad Aghazadeh” the same advice I would give to anyone accused of a crime who has been asked to take a polygraph test:

Dear Mr. Mohammad Aghazadeh,

Our advice to everyone under such circumstances is not to submit to the so-called

Soft Fascism

[Anonymous Coward]

is what it's called. "It's for your own good!"

But eventually it always turns into hard fascism when the "protected" rebel and try to break the padded bars on their cells.

attention submitter, an actual technical reply!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you check said pdf file?
It has metadata information, useful for detecting its origins.

From your pdf:
CreationDate(D:20120518144404-07'00'

So the computer date was off on whatever computer authored the file?
Author 'HHH' ?

If you think you know the person who authored files, you can check if he authored other pdf files and compare the author tag and creationdate to see if it matches. Having the creationdate off by one year will help in this reguard. Of course, if he had someone else create the file, this wont help at all.

Did you respond to his mail in Farsi or English?

My professional opinion is that your advice to him to refuse to take the test was 'material support' and you're screwed. Good luck.

Re:attention submitter, an actual technical reply!

[George Maschke]

Thank you! Yes, I did look at the metadata associated with the PDF file, but haven't been able successful in deducing anything more from it. My replies were in Persian.

This doesn't belong on Slashdot.

[MarkvW]

There's no hint that the government is behind this. It looks like a squabble between to polygraph examiners.

Re:This doesn't belong on Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

TO? lol. you mean "too"

It looks like a squabble between too polygraph examiners.!

It seems unfortunate that you posted his name

[Marrow]

Regardless of your interpretation of the incident, you should not have posted his name. It does not make you seem very trustworthy.

Re:It seems unfortunate that you posted his name

[Smallpond]

Regardless of your interpretation of the incident, you should not have posted his name. It does not make you seem very trustworthy.

You are saying that somebody writes to total stranger, tries to get them to support some shady purpose, uses his real name, and then expects them to keep it secret? On what do you base this? Is there a chapter in Emily Post on dealing with terrorists?

Re:It seems unfortunate that you posted his name

[Marrow]

What if the name is someone in the next cube down. Or an enemy. Or just a name made up that happens to match someone vulnerable.

I cannot gift you with common sense. Either you have it or you don't.

Class action payout

[Anonymous Coward]

About 30 years, someone I know was given a polygraph during a hiring process by a big national retail store. She was not hired.
About 10 years later, she received a letter that she was included in a class action lawsuit for that, unless she opted out. She paid little attention. Another few years passed, and she received a check for $12,000 or $15,000. I forget the exact amount.
I think pre-employment polygraphs are illegal under California Law?

anything can be broken, so nothing is useful

[raymorris]

> if it is possible to fool the polygraph it leaves no doubt that the polygraph is not scientific or useful

Your eyes can be fooled. Therefore they are not useful? Locks can be picked. Therefore they are not useful?

I used to work as a magician and a locksmith, so I can fool your eyes, and your locks. Now that you know your eyes can be fooled and are therefore useless, you're getting rid of them I guess?

If your eyes tell you that I just put your watch in my pocket, that's PROBABLY true. If a polygraph tells you that a stole your watch, it's probably right. Witnesses and polygraphs are about equally reliable.

Re:anything can be broken, so nothing is useful

[Mabhatter]

it's like people that think Blackjack is a "game of chance" when it's just a statistics exercise.

Casinos know most people don't have the mental training to beat the games like Blackjack and they like taking people's money. but when the shoe is on the other foot it's "highly criminal" for those that know the lie to also play the game.

Re:anything can be broken, so nothing is useful

[pepty]

Well put.

Re:anything can be broken, so nothing is useful

[RespekMyAthorati]

If a polygraph tells you that a stole your watch, it's probably right. Witnesses and polygraphs are about equally reliable

On what do you base that claim?

Re:anything can be broken, so nothing is useful

[qeveren]

You do realize that "eyewitness accounts" are considered one of the least reliable forms of evidence, right?

Re:anything can be broken, so nothing is useful

[aiht]

You do realize that "eyewitness accounts" are considered one of the least reliable forms of evidence, right?

I know they are one of the least reliable forms of evidence, but if you're going to talk about how they are considered then you need to specify who is doing the considering. I don't know about the courts of any particular country, but laypeople often seem to consider eyewitness accounts as infallible.

Re:anything can be broken, so nothing is useful

[Megol]

On statistics that shows that eye witnesses aren't reliable?

Re:anything can be broken, so nothing is useful

[mythosaz]

It's never "highly criminal" to play blackjack.

The most casinos can do is ask you to leave and not come back; then press charges against you if you either (a) don't leave, or (b) return when you've been asked not to.

This is the same right pretty much any business owner has if they ask you to leave and not come back.

You seem to have it wrong

[N_Piper]

Not law enforcement or tax men but Hair dressers, middle managers, business men who spout nothing but buzz words in other words idiots.
Idiots who adopted the leaf as a form of currency and then set about preventing inflation by burning down the forests around them.
The only group that was exiled inappropriately were the janitors, Telephone sanitizers to be specific..
Also the leftovers did not form a civilization they went feral breeding with the native cavemen and leaving no trace in the fossil record of their base civilization and ultimately corrupting the program of the biocomputer Earth.
Go through the source material more than once before you make claims about the political meanings of science fiction.

Re:You seem to have it wrong

[omfgnosis]

They didn't live in caves.

Re:You seem to have it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The "business men who spout nothing but buzz words" were, if I remember correctly, advertising executives. In simpler words, professional idiots.

Oblig reference to Streisand Effect

[retroworks]

If the government really doesn't want people to read this guy's blog about passing lie detector tests, it should have ignored him. Or maybe it did, and in order to get us to pay attention, he is making the whole thing up? Is he willing to ... um... nevermind.

"if it was my daughter..."

[globaljustin]

If some dude allegedly did something horrible and the cops were interrogating him, and they got him to agree to a polygraph and he was dumb enough to confess, I would be totally in favor of it...

I don't necessarily object to using the polygraph ever, in any circumstance...

However the majority of polygraphs are institutional polygraphs from govt, military, CIA, law enforcement, etc...they are given regularly and just like anything employees easily adapt b/c **they are bullshit**

Maybe the solution is to use them only if a person is suspected of a crime?

How they are used now is definitely ridiculous!

Re:"if it was my daughter..."

[nitehawk214]

However, unlike movies, in the real civilized world that the rest of us live in, not everyone suspected of a crime is guilty, "they are bad guys" is not an excuse to violate someone's rights, , and the Good Guys Rule does not actually work in real life.
We have things like Habeas Corpus and the Eight Amendment that are supposed to keep the government from locking people up "just because they can." (note, these seem to be mostly ignored these days)
We have these "soft on crime" or "protecting criminals" laws because we can see that the government will absolutely abuse everyone without them.

Re:"if it was my daughter..."

[globaljustin]

not sure we disagree...I'm in favor of very progressive corrections model...at least comparatively for the USA

big time advocate against for-profit prisons

Re:"if it was my daughter..."

[nitehawk214]

Agreed, I think the only thing I disagree on is that "if someone is dumb enough to confess..." That only serves the prison complex by putting as many people as possible in jail. Not the public interest, which is to capture and punish the guilty. A great many people are forced to confess because they are unaware that the police are not allowed to force one from them, that polygraph is bullshit, and are afraid of the piling on of charges that the overzealous DA will do if they do not confess (see Aaron Swartz).

Yeah, having these laws will let the guilty go free on occasion. However as Blackstone/Franklin said "It is better than 10/100 guilty men go free, than one innocent person should suffer." I get the feeling that the justice system does not agree... the prison-industrial complex would prefer it to be closer to "Lock up 100 men regardless of innocence, therefore we profit."

Re:"if it was my daughter..."

[mellyra]

However the majority of polygraphs are institutional polygraphs from govt, military, CIA, law enforcement, etc...they are given regularly and just like anything employees easily adapt b/c **they are bullshit**

Maybe the solution is to use them only if a person is suspected of a crime?

IMO it's exactly the opposite:

Polygraphs are way too unreliable to be ever used in court.

But for checking out potential and current employees they are very useful as they will get many questioned persons to reveal information (as they think they will be found out anyways) that they would otherwise not divulge easily (whether the polygraph actually works as a lie detector or not doesn't matter at all as long as a large part of the population is under the impression that it does) and the cost of false positives is incredibly low (you have dozens of applicants for each job. who cares if you turn down the best qualified because he "failed" your meaningless polygraph test? just take the 2nd or 3rd best one, the practical difference will be nil). False negatives don't matter as you use the polygraph in addition to other checks and not to replace them.

This clip from The Wire demonstrates very well why polygraphs are a useful tool in the screening of recruits and why those who complain about them being unscientific (which they are) completely miss the point.

Re:"if it was my daughter..."

[globaljustin]

right...

officers are allowed to question a suspect...they can ask "Did you steal that car?"

i guarantee it has happened where the cops just asked and the suspect just admitted it...even though they had no evidence...

if you have experience working in law enforcement or the courts you know what I mean...

some 'suspects' are more obviously guilty to the cops than others...IMHO, asking a suspect to take a polygraph and pretending it works is a justifiable tactic...because it really is the same as just asking "Did you steal that car?" only with some extra bullshit

I totally agree w/ your points about unfair questioning, plea bargains, etc, etc...I pretty much agree across the board...

in my view this is just a dispute of interrogation tactics

Lets face it

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss America

If you have money you should hire a big time

[ralphaostrander]

Lawyer and sue for rights violation of your free speech.

People need to learn what entrapment is

[Anonymous Coward]

because this is not entrapment.

Re:Slashdotted content (delete when available agai

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, a blank email with an attached PDF, which only contains text (or does it?)

Re:Slashdotted content (delete when available agai

[Wrath0fb0b]

Why would someone who supposedly fears the police send an unencrypted e-mail acknowledging that heâ(TM)s a member of an Islamic group that is trying to change the government of Iraq?

Why would such a person also provide his full name and how long heâ(TM)s been in the country?

So that if you refuse to do business with him on equal terms with Americans, they can sic the DOJ on you for discrimination in a public accommodation.

After all, it's illegal to refuse to do business with Mr Aghazadeh based on his religion or national origin.

Short version: Lie detector machines don't work ..

[Anonymous Coward]

The short version is that lie detector machines don't work, their only function is to allow the prosecution to accuse you of lying, as such you best bet is to remain silent.

Sounds like malware, not entrapment

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this sound like a successful phishing attempt to anyone else? They sent an email with no body text, but it had a PDF attachment?? My bet is that you got a "gift" when you opened that PDF...

Re:Sounds like malware, not entrapment

[George Maschke]

I found no malware associated with the PDF, though the thought occurred to me before I opened it that it might be malware. The original, raw source of that e-mail message is available here: https://antipolygraph.org/documents/help%20help%20help%20please.eml

FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you plan to maintain private property without murdering the millions who want to take yours? Capitalism can only be imposed by force and mass murder, because it's so completely incompatible with human nature.

Of course in real life either Capitalism or 'State Socialism' ( for lack of a better word, 'Communism' being a postulated stateless society as you should know) can be maintained with incarceration instead of murder. Force though, is always necessary.

locks & eyes dont get you fired

[globaljustin]

nice trolling...precisely because eyes and locks can be fooled means that, indeed, the polygraph is bullshit...

here's why: you lock your car even though it can be picked (i love how you're a locksmith **and** magician)

if none of us locked our cars, even though locks can be picked, then you would have some kind of point...but we live in the real world here

this is analogous to a drug test, but the drug test is based on whether **a person thinks you look stoned**

no defense for how the polygraph is used...just because perception can be manipulated doesn't prove or disprove anything...it's a trolling point

Re:Slashdotted content (delete when available agai

[Anonymous Coward]

He offered Mr Aghazadeh the exact, and equal level of service as he offers american customers.
Advice to refuse the polygraph, consult legal aid, and the book in english.

Mr Aghazadeh was then free to take his "business" to someone who could cater to the specificities of his particular circumstances.

We the people

[TapeCutter]

The opening line of Karl Mark's book..."From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". A succinct, compassionate, and efficient "prime directive" for any "we the people" if you ask me. Yet most adults know the devil is always in the details, for example China has dragged more people above the poverty line than the rest of the world combined in the last 40yrs, (coincidently 14yrs less than my age). China did that with a centrally planned economy. Of course they also put themselves in that the position of wide spread famine in the first place, ironically using the very same "system" of a centrally planning following a series of 5yr plans.

Frankly a 14yo's opinions on comparative politics are about as insightful and original as a 14yo's opinions on birth control, it's mostly second hand knowledge that (like the Marxist slogan above) often bears little resemblance to the real world. However you do seem to have worked out that the "free market" is actually a set of rules that form a trading system for "we the people" (eg: property law), not some magical hand righting wrongs, just a different set of rules to what we use. The system we use says that the "free" in "free market" means anyone can participate in that market, what's not so clear is whether anyone is free NOT to participate. The alcohol market is a trivial example of a non-free market since some sections of the population are prohibited from buying it, and the rest are prohibited from selling it to them.

Don't believe everything people tell you about Marx, Rand, Orwell, et al, go and read what they have to say. There's also a metric shitload of stuff on youtube from modern writers such as Hitchens, Vidal, Pinker, Feynman, Sagan, et al. I particularly like Pinker's latest stuff about the decline of violence over the last 1000yrs and I personally think the "Stanford prison experiments" will be seen as one of (if not The) most important insight into human nature to come out of the 20th century.

Don't let "being wrong" stop you from thinking, the more angles you look at, the more picture's the kaleidoscope of the real world shows you. - refer to sig.

Re:We the people

[garyebickford]

I think I'm a bit insulted, or else you misunderstood me. For that term paper (9th grade) I read Marx, Engels, and others. In fact I got in a lot of trouble for doing so, since this was back in the cold war era - the teacher flunked me for the paper and for the term, and screamed at me for an hour after school. Fortunately wiser heads prevailed and I was put in advanced placement classes after that. My "thing" has always been Systems Science in various forms, including most required classes for an MS in SS. I have continued to study this area, and in fact was on track to get the PhD in Economics, concentrating my research on the complex adaptive systems approach to economics. I'm tempted to respond with an expletive here, but I resist. "Central Planning" is really just a hack to try to make something work, which (as we have seen so many times it's a wonder anyone even bothers any more) is doomed to failure.

(I'm amused by the fact that most large corporations operate internally via a central planning model, which is partly why they are so frustrating to work in. It will be interesting to see how the new post-capitalist networks of doers who just call each other up and assemble a structure-of-the-moment to accomplish a goal will compare.)

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". A succinct, compassionate, and efficient "prime directive" for any "we the people" if you ask me

is an example of the classic liberal confusion of wishes (or goals, if you prefer) with facts. Such a goal can only be reached as an outcome of a system that successfully promotes it, and communism doesn't - the lack of feedback again means it is irrevocably broken.

A free enterprise system does a much better job of meeting those two criteria on a dynamic, stable basis. For instance, as a generality "from each according to his ability" is determined in a free enterprise system as an increasing cost factor as the "from" gets close to the maximum that person is willing to provide, where (as I noted), creating an internally damped feedback loop. In other words, as the demand for my services goes up, I charge more. Under the communist model there is no way to do that except by political means - i.e. management decides what your "ability" is, regardless of your opinion - again, no feedback loop. The quota must be met even if it kills you.

Your example of China is misdirected. It was, in fact, more definitively WalMart and other companies who brought so many people into the global middle class - by some estimates 100 million people by WalMart alone. And this all happened _after_ China began to move away from the communist ideal and started to allow and encourage private enterprise. Today China is only communist in the sense that it is a police state that maintains itself on persistent corruption and its use of power to achieve wealth (a sure sign of a non-capitalist system). From what I've seen, central plannning in China is presently restricted to infrastructure and theft by the powers that be. But I will accept the _possibility_ that what central planning that is done in China today might be a necessary transitional phase while the Chinese gradually learn how to behave in a society of mutual trust and modern "middle class" economic values.

As for being wrong, au contraire. The math on my side is well established and applies equally well to complex adaptive systems ranging from economies to forests. The 100+ years of the eventual failure of all attempts at communism - see Venezuela for a recent example also speaks to the issue.

As an aside, I'm presently reading an SF novel "Accellerando" by Charles Stross, (available as a free e-book) which proposes a post-capitalist, post-communist economic system based on the freedome of information. He argues that with the vast availability of almost all information at a moment's notice, all economic systems based on scarcity and rationing may become obsolete.

Re:We the people

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait. You read Das Kapital for a 9th Grade Term paper? Or you just flicked through the Communist Manifesto?

Re:We the people

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait. You read Das Kapital for a 9th Grade Term paper? Or you just flicked through the Communist Manifesto?

Yes, obvious BS!

Re:We the people

[Capsaicin]

I think I'm a bit insulted, or else you misunderstood me. For that term paper (9th grade) I read Marx, Engels, and others.

I believe you may have read the word 'Marx,' but you show no hint in your posts that you have any understanding of anything he wrote. That's what might be confusing people.

Re:We the people

[Capsaicin]

The opening line of Karl Mark's book...

It's an excerpt from Marx' Critique of the Gotha Programme.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then [sic] can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! [Emphasis added]

The point being that To each according to his contribution was necessarily to be the appropriate principle until that higher phase be accomplished! I.e. simply the elimination of exploitation (in the technical Marxist sense of that word). As you say, don't believe everything people tell you about Marx and, I would add, be careful about taking these slogans out of context. Our friend here seems especially to have had his recall of reading of Kapital (or was it Grundrisse?) coloured by popular misconception.

The system we use says that the "free" in "free market" means anyone can participate ...

Well ... that 'free' means many things to many people. I certainly agree that it implies a freedom of anyone to participate free from qualification (apart from having the requisite wealth). IMO it requires additionally (or perhaps essentially) that the buyer and seller are free to agree between themselves on the price. Thus the market for theatre tickets is a free market only when it involves a scalper.

What you say about China is insightful and often forgotten. Not that I'd want to live under their system mind ...

Re:We the people

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't start talking about market failures in there somewhere I'll start to think that you're merely a well-educated zealot.

Re:We the people

[oreaq]

The Sanford Prison Experiment is a poster child for what was wrong with scientific psychology in most of the last century. Philip Zimbardo, knowingly or unknowingly, designed and implemented the experiment in such a way that he got exactly the results he wanted. The wiki lists some of the deficiencies:

Zimbardo found it impossible to keep traditional scientific controls in place. He was unable to remain a neutral observer, since he influenced the direction of the experiment as the prison's superintendent. Conclusions and observations drawn by the experimenters were largely subjective and anecdotal, and the experiment would be difficult for other researchers to reproduce.

Also look at how ethics committees changed their guidelines as a response to that experiment.

Re:We the people

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you have a great talent for bullshit...
So, you did a thorough analysis of Das Kapital disproving communism when you were 14 and you had a teacher who screamed at you for an hour because you were not supposed to be reading Marx during the cold war era?
Right...

Re:We the people

[Ecuador]

Ah, it reminds me when I was in 8th grade and I mathematically proved the existence of alien life by means of a brilliant modification to Drake's equations, but then Aliens came and convinced me to not let the world know, since the world was not ready. Anal probes might have been involved in the process.

Re:We the people

[garyebickford]

Haha. So the fact that I did not take the time (and 40-plus pages - an unusual size for a slashdot posting) to provide a definitive, line-by-line critique of Marx's entire body of work demonstrates to you an apparent lack of understanding? Fah.

Slashdot comments are, at best, a shorthand. I suppose that all the other philosophers, mathematicians, and social scientists who have completely eviscerated Marx's pathetic lack of logic, misunderstanding of the business world around him, and irrational rantings (which are more about the remaining dregs of post-feudal aristocracies in Europe, which were valid targets of complaint, than about the economic systems that were just beginning arise in his day) also don't "have any understanding of anything he wrote". That's amusing.

So I'll put the discussion on the other foot: Your statement demonstrates that you have neither read nor understood anything about complex adaptive systems (upon which I based my original comments), which, even if Marx actually had any connection with the real world of his day (having never actually had a real job in the 'evil capitalistic system' and spent literally his whole adult life in the warm comfy confines of an extremist self-flagellating society), makes both his work and the work of many _real_ classical economists obsolete, as they nearly all are analyzing linear or at best simple mathematical approximations of how real economies and polities work.

  I suggest you spend a year or so studying, yourself. You can start with the citations on CAS from Wikipedia, then a few dozen various publications from the Santa Fe Institute. Then read "Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos ", some of which is controversial among CAS researchers, but worthy of review.

Then, come back in a year and tell me how Marx even makes sense, especially in the context of modern society. Till then, don't bother me. And, if you want, feel free to read "Accellerando", which takes the concept of money from second derivative linear measure to an object-relational complex that incorporates all aspects of an exchange - an intriguing idea.

Re:We the people

[garyebickford]

Haha! I defer the opportunity to use that as a straight line. :D

Re:We the people

[BranMan]

Yes, of course he read Das Kapital for his 9th grade term paper. In the original Klingon, of course.

Re:We the people

[Capsaicin]

Haha. So the fact that I did not take the time ... to provide a definitive, line-by-line critique of Marx's entire body of work demonstrates to you an apparent lack of understanding?

Not at all. In fact I guarantee that there exists no one in the world who would be prepared to read any line-by-line critique of Marx's entire body of work that you might devise. All that was required was the merest hint that you were familiar with the work you claim to have read and presume to critique.

I suppose that all the other philosophers, mathematicians, and social scientists ... also don't "have any understanding of anything he wrote".

Do not suppose that my comments were directed at anyone apart from you.

Comments along the lines of "completely eviscerating," "pathetic lack of logic" or "irrational rantings [sic]" are not indicative of a dispassionate and reasonable assessment. Clearly there are critics of Marx who are intimately familiar with his work. For something light, I'd recommend David Conway's A Farewell to Marx, a reading of which would leave you with the ability at least to mimic someone who had bothered to read the writer they purport to critique.

So I'll put the discussion on the other foot: Your statement demonstrates that you have neither read nor understood anything about complex adaptive systems ...

The statement: I believe you may have read the word 'Marx,' but you show no hint in your posts that you have any understanding of anything he wrote. That's what might be confusing people. demonstrates a lack of understanding of complex adaptive systems? Wow.

In any case ... NO, you don't get to shift the discussion. I'm making no claims about complex adaptive systems. I'm making a claim about your lack of erudition as regards the writer you claim to have disposed of at age 14.

I suggest you spend a year or so studying, yourself.

LOL

Then, come back in a year and tell me how Marx even makes sense

I have no interest in telling you how Marx makes sense! What do you take me for ... a Marxist?!

This isn't about Marx, it's about your narcissism. It's about the cringeworthy dragshow of your parading your palpable ignorance tarted up as knowledge. In public! There's no ideological dispute here --you got called out, that's all.

Re:We the people

[cold fjord]

... for example China has dragged more people above the poverty line than the rest of the world combined in the last 40yrs, (coincidently 14yrs less than my age). China did that with a centrally planned economy. Of course they also put themselves in that the position of wide spread famine in the first place, ironically using the very same "system" of a centrally planning following a series of 5yr plans.

The main enabler for Chinese economic grow over the last 40 years was the free market reforms of 34 years ago. Prior to that they had a crippled, stagnant economy. It was only through moving away from Marxist - Leninist - Maoist economics towards a form of state capitalism that they were able to develop into an economic powerhouse.

Prior to the initiation of economic reforms and trade liberalization 34 years ago, China maintained policies that kept the economy very poor, stagnant, centrally controlled, vastly inefficient, and relatively isolated from the global economy. Since opening up to foreign trade and investment and implementing free market reforms in 1979, China has been among the world’s fastest-growing economies, with real annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaging nearly 10% through 2012. -- China’s Economic Rise (.pdf)

--------

The opening line of Karl Mark's book..."From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". A succinct, compassionate, and efficient "prime directive" for any "we the people" if you ask me.

Communism may sound beautiful in theory, but in practice it has been pretty much a bloody train wreck of ruin and oppression wherever it's been tried. The Chinese finally decided to move away from it and their economy prospered. The Soviets stuck with it and the Soviet Union disintegrated.

Chinese communism managed to kill about 60,000,000 of the 100,000,000 million people killed by communism in the last century. The vast majority of the Chinese deaths were prior to their economic reforms.

You're right

[Anonymous Coward]

Tons of people got thrown in jail for thinking about marriage equality in the 90s

Not entrapment

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not entrapment.

Someone solicited him based on his own website; and offered no particular incentive. For it to be entrapment it would require an inducement sufficient to encourage an otherwise law abiding citizen to commit a crime, merely making a request of someone advertising services would not come close to qualifying.

However, he did get free advertising on Slashdot...

Re:Not entrapment

[Sarten-X]

270-something comments before I came here to say this, and it's the next-to-last comment on the page.

If the polygraph countermeasures were illegal to teach, then the police didn't need to convince him to teach them, as he was clearly already willing, so it's not entrapment. If the countermeasures were legal, then he wasn't doing anything illegal regardless of being convinced, so still not entrapment.

This could be considered a sting, but not entrapment.

They deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

Burn them to the ground

locks are useless because they are used?

[raymorris]

You're saying locks are useless because they are used? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Locks and polygraphs can both be beaten. I say that doesn't make them useless.

> Iove how you are [were] a locksmith *and* a magician

As a kid, I got into magic. I studied the most famous magician of all, Houdini. Houdini was famous as an escape artist, he'd get out of handcuffs, locked boxes and jail cells. I studied to be like Houdini. That's how my weekend magician gigs lead directly to a short stint working as a locksmith. Fyi, almost all magicians are *and* a day job. A magic show is a 30 minute event on a Friday or Saturday. Magician's don't work 9-5 except the ONE guy with the CBS contract (Henning, Copperfield) and three in Vegas.

From locksmithing and "tricking people" (magic) I got into security, which is my long-term career.

George you were hacked.

[rahvin112]

George, you do realize that it's possible when you opened a foreign PDF from an unknown source you likely exposed your computer? PDF is a very common vector for targeted hacking, it's how Google's systems were compromised by the Chinese.

You should never ever open a PDF from an unknown source unless you are doing so with a dumb PDF reader that can't handle java-script, preferably a Linux or BSD based system. I would consider your system compromised unless you can confirm otherwise, and proving a negative is damn hard.

Re:George you were hacked.

[George Maschke]

I did, in fact, first use a PDF reader other than Adobe's. The PDF is available as a MIME attachment to the e-mail I received, the raw source of which can be downloaded here: https://antipolygraph.org/documents/help%20help%20help%20please.eml . If any readers have the technical skills to analyze it for malware, I'd be grateful.

Weed and at will employment - you're wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it discriminates against a protected class, an employer can make whatever rules they want. If they want to fire people who wear green socks on tuesdays, they can. There is no legal requirement that things be "job related".

Now, if you were smoking weed as part of a religious observance, that might fly: religion can be (but not always is) a protected class. See for instance, Disney cast members and hijab wearing.

You're probably thinking of the BFOQ (Bona Fide Occupational Qualification).. I can discriminate against women who want to work as male strippers, for instance, because being male is a BFOQ for that job. But as long as my capricious and arbitrary restriction (weed smoking, green sock wearing,etc.) does not have a *disparate impact* on a protected class, I'm free to do it.

Now, you'll certainly run across employment law and HR types who say "oooh no, you can't do that", but that's more out of an abundance of caution, rather than an actual law or regulation.

Re:Slashdotted content (delete when available agai

[Bite The Pillow]

Looks like someone who is certain there must be a translated version either on the site or linked in a forum. I assume the Firefox visit is from the xp virtual mode of win7.

Seeing requests from a translator service like " via translate" or babelfish might make this less suspicious.

If I wrote you in Persian, I would think that a request for a book would be in that language, if it were not available on the site.

Review the conclusions, considering we don't know search history outside of what is presented. Nothing is obviously wrong. A pro needs to examine the full logs and probably other data, and likely won't find anything wrong. Of course it is harder to prove a negative, since you could have missed the one smoking gun.

part that matters most

[globaljustin]

this is analogous to a drug test, but the drug test is based on whether **a person thinks you look stoned**

there it is...polygraphs are like that...

you can't make a logical counterpoint because none exists...polygraphs are simply some person's guess if you look like you are lying based on pseudo-science and w/e bullshit they want to invent in their heads

there is absolutely **no defense for it** and it should only be used to interrogate suspects of a specific crime (in case they are dumb enough to believe it works), not ever as routine security or pre-employement tests for things like probation, FBI, law enforcement, etc...

The Lie Behind the Lie Detector

[blanchae]

If you are ever asked to take a lie detector test then you should read this free pdf book: The Lie Behind the Lie Detector. It will answer all of your questions about the game that is played. Lie detectors can not read your mind and cannot tell the truth from lies.

it's far worse

[stenvar]

Things you shouldn't learn about in 2013 because they may mark you as a potential terrorist or criminal: metal working (gun making), electronics (bomb making), chemistry (bomb making, drugs), surveillance and forensics (espionage and evasion), networking (cyber terrorism), number theory and cryptography (espionage and evasion), data mining (espionage and economic crime), image processing (espionage), mechanical and civil engineering (sabotage and terrorism), molecular biology and microbiology (bioterrorism), and probably others.

You can't do science and engineering without learning how to potentially do bad things. We have three choices: (1) we accept the fact that technology has risks and live with the occasional loss, (2) we start living in a technologically advanced totalitarian society in which technology can only be used with the blessing of government, or (3) we revert to a less technologically advanced society. But we can't have both liberty and total safety; they are incompatible. Of those, I find (2) by far the worst choice, but it's what we're headed for right now

What's particularly disconcerting is that the so-called "liberal" in the White House with credentials of Constitutional scholarship has been advancing this agenda even faster than his "conservative" predecessor, all the while bemoaning the lack of interest in STEM education and making noises about "fixing" education.

Ok, scratch that last part

[Marrow]

That was a little too sharp.

Radium Soup - yet another Faux News tool

[Anonymous Coward]

so far, there have been no implementations of the Communist ideology *without* suppression of free people to the extreme of mass murdering the dissenters.

Absolutely false. I'm not in favor of communism, but I'm even less in favor of Know-Nothings. And you're a paid shill anyway.

For those who care, AFAIK there have been no modern implementations of communism at the national scale that were not established violently. However, small communes (30 people or so) are commonplace and seem to work OK, and typically aren't violently established. The first Puritan colony in the Americas was a communism for the first two years; historically, most new colonies are either dictatorships or communes.

In contrast, one might note that there have also been no bloodless implementations of any other economic system that involved wholesale overthrow of the existing system in the modern era.

Nothing in the write up is

[geekoid]

entrapment.

"In criminal law, entrapment is conduct by a law enforcement agent inducing a person to commit an offense that the person would otherwise have been unlikely to commit"

Not free to not participate

[GPS Pilot]

The system we use says that the "free" in "free market" means anyone can participate in that market, what's not so clear is whether anyone is free NOT to participate.

Until a few weeks ago, Americans were free not to participate in the market for health insurance. Now, not participating is illegal. (Or, if you're Chief Justice Roberts, you can consider it to be a legal but taxable activity -- just long enough to establish the constitutionality of the scheme -- and then we can all go back to saying "I absolutely reject the notion" that Obamacare is a tax.)

Obamacare supporters justify all this by saying that the free market wasn't working, because people who could afford to buy health insurance, but didn't, were getting free healthcare anyway; hence the need for an insurance mandate.

Here's the flaw in that argument. Let group B be the cancer patients who faithfully paid insurance premiums prior to their diagnosis, and group A be the cancer patients who had the means to insure their health, but chose not to.

When healthcare providers or governments, out of misplaced compassion, make the financial outcome for group A not so different from the financial outcome for group B, the incentive to buy insurance in the first place is indeed greatly eroded. Trouble is, it's not a free market that was malfunctioning and providing that perverse disincentive; it's a non-free market. A free market would rigorously enforce that the catastrophe group B insured itself against really happens to the group that chose not to insure itself against catastrophe. Those who choose not to insure their health would understand that they'd be subjecting themselves to seizure and forfeiture of their assets, no kidding, to whatever extent necessary to compensate their healthcare provider. Cautionary tales of people who gambled that they wouldn't need health insurance, and lost that gamble, would provide powerful free-market incentives to buy health insurance.

Sound harsh? It's not as harsh as the alternative Americans just acquiesced to: government coercion to buy health insurance.

Slaves

[DarthVain]

Not to mention that most of the rail produced in north america was done by slave labor, or at the very least severely exploited people. Also the stealing of native lands, and wholesale slaughter of said peoples.

That and more are glossed over in these romantic simplistic idealized fiction.

Every time high speed rail is proposed, these truths are exposed, as it would be very expensive to do today. Though if you could nationalize the confiscation of land, go back to near slavery, and enforce it all with the military, while actually stealing all the capitol from the taxpayers...

"Great Men" indeed.

employment polygraphs should be lillegal

[globaljustin]

I call bullshit...

first, don't show a damn clip from TV crime *fiction* in a science-based discussion...just fuck off with that...

2nd, don't agree with my logic then say it supports the opposite conclusion.

Polygraphs for *anything* other than a suspect in an active investigation, done by a deputized officer trained in proper interrogation, is just a subsidy for wannabes who couldn't get into Medical School (polygraphers)

Employment polygraphs, be it for the CIA, FBI, NSA, or the corner grocery are a complete waste of time and money.

Your scenario is ridiculous ("meh, you'll always have like 15 so who cares if the best one is a false positive"...fuck off)...your stats about false positives are inventions of your imagination...your logic supports the opposite conclusion

I almost hope you **are** a paid commenter or bot.....you're perpetuating a criminal enterprise